(Mostly about dance and male bodies, with only a bit about language.)
From balletomane (and sometime dancer) Mike McKinley a little while ago, this wonderful photo he found on the Male Ballet Dancers Facebook site (where, as common there, the poster provided no information at all about the source):
(#1)
A beautiful male dancer performing a step in which he appears to be flying in mid-air, exhibiting great power and great grace simultaneously. You don’t have to be into ballet to admire his body and his performance.
Thanks to Google’s image source, I was able to identify the dancer as Jesse Inglis of the Compañía Nacional de Danza España, in a photo by Carlos Quezada. That search led me to three similar performances by other dancers and to a wonderful set of photos of a male couple flying together.
But first some notes on the step in #1, from Mike, who wrote to me:
It’s not a “classical academic” step. It’s something more like demi caractère dancing which is a sub-genre of ballet. If you know Nutcracker, think of the “national” dances in the final act or see [the Wikipedia page on character dance, which tells us:]
Character dance is a specific subdivision of classical dance. It is the stylized representation of a traditional folk or national dance, mostly from European countries, and uses movements and music which have been adapted for the theater.
The step is definitely a grand jeté with a cambré en arriére. There are a bazillion kinds of jeté from small petite allegro to the big ones shown in the photo. Below is from the ABT Ballet Dictionary [on pas jeté}:
Throwing step. A jump from one foot to the other in which the working leg is brushed into the air and appears to have been thrown. There is a wide variety of pas jetés (usually called merely jetés) and they may be performed in all directions.
Now from the Dancerboys site, this shot of dancer Fabian Morales, photographed by Carlos Quezada:
(#2)
And from that same site, this shot of dancer Francesco Mariottini, photographed by Romano Paoleschi:
(#3)
And from another site, this shot of Sergei Polunin (photographed by Dave Morgan) doing a high jump in Narcise:
(#4)
Now to the male duo of Isaac Montllor and Jean Philippe Dury, of the Compañía Nacional de Danza España, as photographed by Fernando Marcos, under the title Levitadores (literally, ‘levitators’):
(#5)
(#6)
(#7)
Montllor is the darker, somewhat shorter, Spanish one, Dury the lighter, somewhat taller, French, one. Both hot, but in different ways, and they make a nice contrast as a couple. This photo (in a thumbnail) suggests that they are romantic partners as well as dance partners:
(#8)
Dury began in the corps of the Paris Opera Ballet and then moved to Spain as a principal dancer in the CND. Dury’s career has been principally as a choreographer for a while now; his own conpany, Elephant in a Black Box, is based in Madrid. Montllor performs traditional Spanish dance as well as ballet.
