Busting Stereotypes (and Moves) With #BoysDanceToo

Brut America

After a GMA host caused controversy when she mocked Prince George's ballet classes, hundreds of dancers showed up to support the community. Dancer Alex Wong spoke to Brut about breaking stereotypes about boys and dance.

Transcript

00:00I have news for you, Prince William.

00:21We'll see how long that lasts.

00:28Those stereotypes and things like that are so harmful for young male dancers, because

00:34it really discourages boys from dancing.

00:43Laura, really?

00:53Some of us take ballet.

00:55Some of us win Tony Awards because we took ballet.

00:58Ballet teaches you integrity, teaches you discipline, teaches you respect, and it teaches

01:02you bravery.

01:03And if there are any boys out there that want to dance and want to pick up a dance class,

01:07do it.

01:08Boys dance too.

01:09Shut out that laughter, and you can be successful if you work really hard.

01:13Look at the great contributors to the world and society, men that have studied dance.

01:19Steve Jobs, hello.

01:22You know, Bob Fosse, Christopher Walken, Dustin Hoffman, Patrick Dempsey, Norman Nixon.

01:30We'd get more Steve Jobs if we had more ballet, less bullying.

01:38Somehow at five years old, I already had it on my mind that dancing was only for girls.

01:43My gosh, I don't even know where I would get that idea from at five, you know what I mean?

01:48I don't want to have boys these days have that same mentality, and that mentality obviously

01:53comes from what you see on TV, what you hear in the news, what people talk about.

02:07No matter what I say in terms of that I didn't get bullied that much, yes, absolutely, I

02:13still got bullied, and I still heard things and people smirking and things like that.

02:19I just knew that I loved it enough to filter out the noise, and I knew that in the future

02:25it's like you won't hear it as much, and there's an entire world out there of male dancers

02:31and professional male dancers and stuff like that, so it was like I knew there was a future.

02:43There's an entire dance world out there, there's an entire arts world out there that appreciates

02:47dance and appreciates what you do, and it's just like train hard and get out of there

02:53and just live your life, it's going to be amazing.

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