Young, Iris Marion. “Throwing Like a Girl: A Phenomenology of Feminine Bodily Comportment, Motility, and Spatiality.” Human Studies 3 (1980): 137-156.
While all the resources on the gender and queer theory list are relevant to dance, I’m posting this particular one on both lists because I find it so foundational to thinking about gender as embodied practice. Young talks about movement, posture, gesture, relationship to space, interactions with other humans…the stuff of which dances are made. The article is 40 years old and it shows its age in many ways. However, if taken as an example of how gender was embodied in white, cisgender, middle-class, American women (and men), it is still very useful. It opens up a way of asking questions about how gender is embodied in other cultures, times, places, classes, etc.
Burt, Ramsay. The Male Dancer: Bodies, Spectacle, Sexualities. 2nd Edition. London: Routledge, 2007.
The first two chapters of this book provide an excellent literature review of what had been published written on gender in western dance traditions up to the time of its publication (2007). (The rest of the book is a worthwhile read too!)
Bench, Harmony. “Single Ladies is Gay: Queer Performances and Mediated Masculinities on YouTube.” Dance on its Own Terms. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. 127-151.
This article examines male dance-covers of Beyonce’s Single Ladies and offers useful ways of thinking about strategies for presenting queerness and masculinities.
Bauer, Nancy. “Lady Power.” Opinionator: The Stone (blog). The New York Times.
This brief article opens a conversation about self-objectification, using Lady Gaga as the case study.
Albright, Ann Cooper. “Techno Bodies.” Choreographing Difference: The Body and Identity in Contemporary Dance. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1996.
A useful look at strength and muscularity as feminist strategies in 1980s/1990s contemporary dance. It also provides some great examples of how a choreographer can undermine female agency, even as they foreground female dancers’ physical power.