Ernie Horvath & Rodger Max Barrow

[reviews_and_ramblings]

Over the course of a distinguished career, Ian "Ernie" Horvath (c. 1946, Cleveland - 5 January 1990, St. Vincent's Hospital, New York City, age 46) worked as a modern and ballet dancer, producing director of the Limon Dance Foundation, co-founder of Cleveland Ballet, soloist with the Joffrey Ballet and American Ballet Theater, and associate director of the Carlisle Project. (Picture: Photo: Zachary Freyman, courtesy Zachary Freyman Collection, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations)

He was also a choreographer whose final work, No Dominion (1988), for the Limon company dealt directly with his AIDS-related illness. Beginning his dance training with Charles Nicoll in Cleveland, Horvath went on to study at the School of American Ballet, with the Joffrey, Ballet Theater, and the Ballet Russe. In 1964, he joined Joffrey, and created roles in Arpino's Viva Vivaldi! and Olympics. In 1967, he moved to ABT to dance, and in 1972 to Cleveland Ballet to assume the artistic director position. He left Cleveland Ballet in 1983. As a spokesperson for people with AIDS, Horvath was instrumental in organizing Dancing for Life, a benefit at the New York State Theater in September 1987.

Horvath was associate director of the Carlisle Project for ballet choreography, chairman of the board of Dance/USA, a dance panelist for the NEA council, and a consultant to City Center. His various Broadway performances included roles in Funny Girl, and Fade Out-Fade In. His final performance was in 1988 at City Center, in a piece titled Together with Cynthia Gregory and Fernando Bujones.

At Horvath's death, Rodger Max Barrow was noted as Horvath's companion. Barrow was Excutive Director of Utah's Repertory Dance Theatre and Director of Development for the Joffrey and Feld Ballets and City Center Theatre. He died of complications from Aids on May 14, 2000, on Fire Island Pines.

Source: http://www.artistswithaids.org/artforms/dance/catalogue/horvath.html

Further Readings:

The Male Dancer: Bodies, Spectacle and Sexuality by Ramsay Burt
Paperback: 240 pages
Publisher: Routledge (June 1, 1995)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 041508900X
ISBN-13: 978-0415089005
Amazon: The Male Dancer: Bodies, Spectacle and Sexuality

In this challenging and lively book, Ramsay Burt examines the representation of masculinity in twentieth century dance. Taking issue with formalist and modernist accounts of dance, which dismiss gender and sexuality as irrelevant, he argues that prejudices against male dancers are rooted in our ideas about the male body and male behaviour.

Building upon ideas about the gendered gaze developed by film and feminist theorists, Ramsay Burt provides a provocative theory of spectorship in dance. He uses this to examine the work of choreographers like Nijinsky, Graham, Bausch, while relating their dances to the social, political and artistic contexts in which they were produced. Within these re-readings, he identifies a distinction between institutionalised modernist dance which evokes an essentialist, heroic, `hypermasculinity'; one which is valorised with reference to nature, heterosexuality and religion, and radical, avant garde choreography which challenges and disrupts dominant ways of representing masculinity.

The Male Dancer will be essential reading for anyone interested in dance and the cultural construction of gender.

More LGBT Couples at my website: http://www.elisarolle.com/, My Ramblings/Real Life Romance