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"Billy Elliot" and Dancing While Male

by Claudia La Rocco and Brian Zumhagen

NEW YORK, NY January 03, 2009 —The musical "Billy Elliot" is one of the few that’s still holding strong in an otherwise dismal time for a lot of Broadway shows. It’s a coming-of-age story about a young boy and his love of ballet, set against the backdrop on a 1984 miners' strike in England, and some fairly conservative attitudes about boys and dance. It got cultural critic Claudia LaRocco thinking about all the other little male dancers out there. She talks to Weekend Edition Host Brian Zumhagen about those boys and the grown-up professional dancers they’ve become.


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