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Ever since, save for a brief flourish of male virtuosos led by Nijinsky in the early 1900s, the prevailing attitude has been, as so often repeated by the New York City Ballet's George Balanchine, that "ballet is woman." Now the men are coming back. In fact, the whole image of the male dancer is changing. Jacques d'Amboise, for example, could pass as a halfback for the New York Giants rather than what he is, a principal dancer for the New York City Ballet. Still, shrugs D'Amboise, whenever he is introduced to someone, "I see in their eyes the nagging question: 'Is he a man?'" Many male dancers are not.
Sometime Freak. So what? cry some balletomanes. Indeed, homosexual dancers can be the most manly of performers. But not always, and the sissy reputation they have given the art has deterred a large segment of the male population from ever going to see "one of those pansy ballets," much less even considering the dance as a career. Even today, if a boy hints that he might like to be a dancer, he becomes the playground freak, and Daddy goes rushing off to consult the family psychiatrist.
But times are changing, and where once the ratio of girls to boys taking up the dance was 50 to 1, it is now about 15 to 1. As a result, the world's top ballet companies can now boast the most gifted generation of male dancers ever.
> The Royal Danish Ballet's Erik Bruhn, 36, is the supreme danseur noble. Among dancers, his technique is rated as the closest thing yet to classic perfection. Eschewing fire for finesse, he wins with his princely grace and finely chiseled Nordic profile. Says Italy's Prima Ballerina Clara Fracci: "Nureyev is like Callas singing Bellini; Bruhn is like Schwarzkopf singing Mozart."
>The New York City Ballet's Edward Villella, 29, a former amateur boxer and baseball player, is a masterful actor and prodigious jumper. Slight, darkly handsome, he brings a rambunctious joie de vivre to the dance that has made him the darling of the galleries and, with D'Amboise, the new hope for male dancers in the U.S.
> The Bolshoi Ballet's Vladimir Vasiliev, 25, is an impetuous, thick-legged virtuoso of the acrobatic. He is perhaps the highest jumper of them all. And at the Bolshoi, where spectacle comes before style, that counts for everything. An accomplished painter and passionate actor, he excels at such character roles as Basil in Don Quixote and the prince in Cinderella.
> The Leningrad-Kirov Ballet's Yuri Soloviev, 25, is the shining archetype of the precise, understated 19th century classical tradition espoused by the Kirov. Though constructed along the lines of a weight lifter, he is a gracefully lyrical dancer noted for his long, floating leaps.