Valentino: Pink Powder Puff

It began with an editorial in the Chicago Tribune, a spiteful piece of writing that manages to be both racist and homophobic. The writer declares himself outraged to find a face-powder dispenser in a men’s bathroom, and places the blame on a movie star. Valentino had turned America’s women on to sex, and now, allegedly, he had turned America’s men on to male grooming. “Homo Americanus! Why didn’t someone quietly drown Rudolph Guglielmo, alias Valentino, years ago? … Hollywood is a national school of masculinity. Rudy, the beautiful gardener’s boy, is the prototype of the American male. Hell’s bells. Oh, sugar.”

Valentino responded with an angry letter to a rival paper “You cast doubt upon my manhood … I defy you to meet me in the boxing … arena.” He saw the “pink powder puff” attack as racist in its motivation, because he was a foreigner working in the US. When the writer, who it turned out was sick with TB, failed to respond, Valentino flexed his muscles by decking a couple of stooges in exhibition matches in New York and Chicago instead. Ken Russell’s version of events is naturally far more dramatic, with Nureyev squaring up to a beefy hack played by Peter Vaughan and tackling a drinking contest as a sequel to the bout...

The Guardian.

TV Review: Rudolf Nureyev - Dance To Freedom

Я всегда полагал, что Радолф Нереиев будет предателем его советской родины, но я наслаждался этой программой очень.
It - о том, как в 1961, он перешел на сторону Запада.
, Но эта телевизионная игра показывает, что доброжелательные российские власти позволяют ему идти!
Nureyev сыгран знаменитой балериной Артем Овчаренко - он красив, волшебными глазами.
Это было большой и неотразимой драмой, хотя в конец каждый заключает, что Nureyev был эгоистичным влагалищем!

Наблюдают это на BBC iPlayer.

PS Here's a Guardian article about Nureyev's 'defection' and the programme.

Rudolf Nureyev: 1938-1993

Rudy died on January 6th 1993.
x

Russia: Your Actual Art

Everyone knows about Tchaikovsky, but it’s not so well-known that the greatest Russian epic opera, Boris Godunov, was composed by another gay composer — Mussorgsky. The two greatest 20th-century Russian pianists, Horowitz and Richter, were gay. So were the century’s greatest Russian male dancers: Nijinsky and Nureyev. Eisenstein, the Soviet Union’s top film-maker, preferred men, as did Diaghilev, the visionary Ballet Russes impresario. So did innumerable writers through Russian history — though many, like Gogol, were forced to suppress their feelings. These geniuses didn’t just change art; their charisma also greatly increased the gaiety of a nation otherwise inclined — by politics, climate and temperament — to a grim stoicism.

I had a bizarre personal experience of that homoerotic charisma back in the late 1970s. As the most junior journalist on a tiny arts magazine I had the weekly job of visiting the bohemian lodgings of our dance critic — a magnificently camp dilettante who possessed neither a typewriter nor any understanding of the word “deadline” — and standing over him until he had composed his article.

One week I walked in and found a stranger draped over the chaise longue. Being a mustard-keen cub reporter, I didn’t take more than five minutes to register two remarkable facts. The first was that he was Rudolf Nureyev. The second was that he was wearing only a silk robe that had fallen open to reveal, well, let’s say his entire corps de ballet. I can’t remember which of those observations hit me first, but I was flummoxed by their combined impact. I stammered “Oh gosh”, which I think Nureyev took as a compliment. Either way, he broke into a grin — and regally offered me his hand to kiss...

Richard Morrison in The Times.

On the Olympics boycott? "Right idea, wrong tactics".

"The campaign against Section 28 of the Local Government Act (1988) which prohibits the spending of municipalities on 'promoting homosexuality', drew upon the notion that gay men have produced a notable proportion of what is called art and literature. The campaign was courageous, well organised and much publicised, and arts celebrities came out. Astonishingly, at first sight, this carried little weight with the government and newspapers who support it; the votes in parliament were  were the same at the end of the campaign as at the beginning. The reason, I believe, is that people in our cultures already know that art is associated stereotypically, with male homosexuals..."

Alan Sinfield, The Wilde Century.

Update: In The Independent David Lister says Russian artists should speak out on Putin's [sic] anti-gay laws.
Again, better than Western celebs pontificating, but it won't be The Arts that stop this...

The Daily Telegraph: Nutcracker

"Throughout western Europe, despite much official counter-effort, there is a strong and persistent association of ballet with homosexuality. Like many such notions, this one is unexamined and misleading: my proposition is that, although the audience of connoisseurs may contain a high proportion of gay men, the roll-call of male dancers presents another story. Insiders explain it to me like this.
"Being in constant intimate contact with beautifully honed and tensile bodies, stimulated by music and choreography of sensual intensity, and excited by the adrenalin rush of performance, ballet dancers are not surprisingly creatures who spend much of their professional lives on high sexual heat. However great the artistic spirituality involved, what we are talking about here is an animal process of courtship and arousal.
"The result is obvious: to put it bluntly, dancers, male and female, are in such a state of readiness that they will grab at anything in a skirt or trousers, leotard or legwarmers, to relieve their itch. Labelling the male-on-male contacts as homosexual or bisexual is missing the point.
"This has not penetrated the consciousness of the man on the Clapham omnibus, where the popular prejudice in relation to male ballet dancers remains a staple of stand-up comedy and schoolboy sniggers.
"Not so in Russia, where ballet is considered a noble profession and the male dancer is honoured and respected...
"Under the communist regime, homosexuality carried the risk of prison or the gulags and was, therefore, simply not discussed, publicly or privately. Strict censorship also meant that any vulgar jokes about bulging pink tights and mincing gaits never had channels through which to circulate..."

Rupert Christiansen, Why Nobody Is Sniggering At Russia's Men In Tights, The Daily Telegraph.
This is a textbook example of how journalist's so often get away with writing absolute nonsense.
Every single sentence can be followed by the comment; "Bollocks!"
Mr Christensen seems to be suggesting that ballet dancers are practically rutting onstage.
While this may be true - and I'll have to take his word for it - it doesn't explain why so many male dancers from Nijinsky to Nureyev are gay offstage, when they're not "on high sexual heat."
And the assertion that there were no anti-gay jokes under the Soviet regime is, well, laughable.