Gay men have long played a prominent role in the arts, especially in ballet. Three of the greatest ballet artists of all time—Sergei Diaghilev, Vaslav Nijinsky, and Rudolf Nureyev—were homosexual or bisexual.

Diaghilev, a Russian nobleman, was born in March 1872 in Novgorod. A renowned choreographer, he created the Ballets Russes and profoundly shaped the development of the art form in the 20th century. He was known for his use of talented male dancers, modern music, and erotic scenarios. An unabashed homosexual, Diaghilev reportedly once told a friend, "It is absolutely necessary for me to make love three times a day." Diaghilev nurtured the talents of many young men, among them his lover Vaslav Nijinsky.

Nijinsky was born in March 1889 in Kiev, Russia. Both of his parents were dancers, and he and his sister trained at the Imperial Ballet School in St. Petersburg. After his graduation, Nijinsky began a relationship with Prince Pavel Lvov, who introduced the young dancer to Diaghilev. Nijinsky later recalled an encounter with the choreographer at his hotel: "I immediately allowed him to make love to me...My mother and I had to eat."

As the principal male dancer of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russe, Nijinsky soon won acclaim throughout Europe. Famed for his spectacular jumps and his sensuous, androgynous roles, Nijinsky redefined the image of the male ballet dancer. Under Diaghilev’s tutelage, Nijinsky began choreographing his own productions. Among these was L’apres-midi d’un faune (Afternoon of a Faun), in which Nijinsky himself played the title role. Near the end of the show, the faun masturbates with a scarf, and Nijinsky’s pelvic thrusts created quite a scandal.

In 1913, Nijinsky married dancer Romola de Pulsky, which caused Diaghilev to end their relationship and dismiss Nijinsky from his company. Not long after, Nijinsky suffered a mental breakdown and was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. His wife had him committed to a mental hospital, and he lived in various institutions until his death in 1950.

Not until a decade after Nijinsky’s death would the dance world again see a male ballet star of his caliber. Like Nijinsky, Rudolf Nureyev also changed public perceptions of male dancers, who were often viewed as little more than adjuncts to ballerinas. But in contrast to Nijinsky’s androgyny, Nureyev presented an athletic, masculine image.

Nureyev was born on a train in eastern Siberia in March 1938. Despite his father’s objections, he began dancing as a child, and as a teen attended the prestigious Leningrad Ballet School. Though an excellent dancer, Nureyev was a rebellious student and refused to join the Communist youth league. After graduation, he became a principal dancer with the Kirov Ballet.

During the Kirov’s tour in Paris in 1961, Nureyev eluded his bodyguards and defected to the west. His celebrated "leap to freedom" allowed him to openly pursue sexual relations with men for the first time. Nureyev went to Copenhagen to train and perform with Danish Royal Ballet star Erik Bruhn, 10 years his senior, who Nureyev said was "the only dancer who has anything to show me I don’t already know." The two men fell in love, but their relationship was turbulent from the start—"pure Strindberg," as Bruhn later described it.

Although Nureyev also had long-term relationships with director Wallace Potts and dancer Robert Tracy, he was renowned for his many sexual liaisons, and often frequented gay bars and bathhouses. On one occasion, he slipped out during the intermission of a performance and was detained by police for having sex in a public lavatory, enraging his famous costar, Dame Margot Fonteyn. Despite his enfant terrible reputation, Nureyev was a driven artist, performing with international dance companies into his fifties and directing the Paris Opera Ballet until his death from AIDS in 1993.

In addition, many other well-known ballet dancers and choreographers have been homosexual or bisexual, including Jean Borlin (principal dancer of the Swedish Ballet, created by his wealthy lover); Jerome Robbins (who reported the names of friends to the House Un-American Activities Committee, purportedly to avoid exposure of his sexuality); Alvin Ailey and Robert Joffrey (both of whom also died of AIDS); and Rudi Van Dantzig (who wrote an autobiographical novel, For a Lost Soldier, about a Dutch boy’s affair with a soldier during World War II). But at least as many have been heterosexual, including Michel Fokine and George Balanchine (both of whom worked with Diaghilev), and the latest ballet superstar, Mikhail Baryshnikov.

Although often regarded as unmanly, ballet was originally based on the moves of fencing and requires great physical strength and endurance. Today, male ballet dancers’ sensuous movements and costumes—which stem from an era when men, not women, wore revealing clothing—challenge conventional notions about the appropriate display of the male body. Even if ballet dancers are no more likely to be gay than straight, the art form has an undeniable homoerotic appeal.

For further reading:

Garafola, Lynn. 2000. Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes (Oxford University Press).
Kopelson, Kevin. 1997. The Queer Afterlife of Vaslav Nijinsky (Stanford University Press).
Solway, Diane. 1998. Nureyev: His Life (William Morrow).