Dancing Boys: High School Males in Dance - Softcover

Li, Zihao

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1442626321 ISBN 13: 9781442626324

Publisher: University of Toronto Press, 2016

Synopsis

The challenges that young women go through in order to be successful in the world of dance are well known. However, little is known about the experiences of young men who choose to take dance classes in non-professional settings.

Dancing Boys is one of the first scholarly works to demystify the largely unknown challenges of adolescent males in dance. Through an ethnographic study of sixty-two adolescent male students, Zihao Li captures the authentic stories and experiences of boys participating in dance classes in a public high school in Toronto. Accompanied by the boys’ artwork and photographs and supported by a documentary-style video, the study explores their motivations for dancing, their reflections on masculinity and gender, and the internal and external factors that impact their decisions to continue to dance professionally or in informal settings. With the author’s reflections on his own journey as a professional dancer woven throughout, Dancing Boys will spark discussion on how and why educators can engage adolescent males in dance.

About this title

About the Author

Zihao Li is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Macau. He has performed with the Guangdong Modern Dance Company, the Hong Kong Dance Company, the City Contemporary Dance Company, and the German Hamburg Ballet.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Toronto Press
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1442626321
• ISBN 13: 9781442626324
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192