Rather than putting a man into a woman’s role, Lovette choreographed the piece for two men the audience can see the dancers negotiating their positions, just as queer couples negotiate theirs. It’s a thrilling duet, both men in white T-shirts and black pants moving toward and away from each other, embracing and rejecting and succumbing to desire and love. Koch Theater, it sent a jolt of relevance through an art form that often feels mired in another era. When it premiered last fall at New York’s David H. We’re looking at a Facebook video of Chamblee and his fellow company member Taylor Stanley, 27, in a romantic pas de deux in the choreographer Lauren Lovette’s “ Not Our Fate.” The ballet depicts a love story between two men of color not as subtext but as central narrative.
Out of nowhere, I told him he was my favorite ballet dancer in the world. The isolation of my queer youth was about to return. He might have said, “Lovely party,” but that was it, he was on his way.
Now he was in loose linen pants with a drawstring belt and an open collar that exposed the rod of his clavicle. Onstage, the ballerino wore brown tights that showed the trunks of his thighs, and everything else. Something about his movement told me he was gay, and I felt he was dancing not only for himself but for me. Earlier that evening, I had seen the dancer turn, leap and smile onstage, expressing through the mute language of ballet who he was. No, this is about the ballerino - my word for him - I met and what he represented to a lonely gay kid in Southern California in 1984, a kid who had never before met another gay person. I recall about 200 people - family friends, Olympic officials and maybe 25 dancers - eating curry (is that right?) off paper plates. The company had come to Los Angeles to dance in the Olympic Arts Festival, and my parents volunteered to host a post-performance dinner in our backyard. When I was 15, I met a dancer from Canada’s Royal Winnipeg Ballet.