 the male dancer
written by balletboy             on 15.11. at 23:52:44 - as answer to: What to wear? by Carla atCarla, as Brian says, black tights and white T-shirt are the most common dress for young male dancers. Either black or white ballet slippers are necessary. I prefer wearing white ballet slippers with white socks when wearing black or dark-colored tights, because the contrast allows the feet to be seen better. Of course, the dancebelt is "mandatory." It is a special supporter. It's designed to draw the male organs UP out of the way of the crotch, so the testicles should be drawn up, and the penis pointing upward. This is needed to avoid any injury to these delicate organs when doing certain ballet steps, especially where the legs are close together and may involve "scissor" movements. The dancebelt also helps support these organs up in place when jumping, so that they're not "clanging" around. Most dancebelts are a thong style, with a thin butt-strap that fits closely between the butt cheeks. This may take some time to get used to. Some dancebelts have a "padded" front pouch for greater comfort, but the padding also absorbs sweat/secretions. There has been a lot written on this site about dancebelts (look down the list and in the archive section), but some of it is not "necessary" (Heck, some of it is down-right improper!), as the dancebelt has been a major concern for male dancers. If your son has specific questions, you can address most of the guys here (The highlighted names on the top of the page will take you to the e-mail address), but I'd suggest you read some of their postings and decide who is reasonable enough to correspond. Also, there are two other websites for ballet: www.danceart.com has message boards for Men in Dance and Guy's Club (teens), and has many good postings over the last few months that discuss dancebelts. You don't have to sign up at danceart, but can sign-on as a GUEST to read the boards. There's also www.balletalert.com, which has a number of forums for "Ballet Talk." There's the special forum for Men. However, I don't think I've seen dancebelts discussed at balletalert, although they have monitors and professional dancers who post there. As for stores, as Brian suggests, check your yellow-pages. Dancewear stores are not as common as they used to be, and some may not have men's dancewear. This is because of the explosion of dancewear websites where the prices are often lower. You don't need a credit-card to order from a site or a catalogue: you can place an order and send them a money order for the amount owed. www.nydancewear.com and www.backbaydancewear.com are two popular sites, but there are many more. You can go to www.dancer.com to their miscellaneous LINKS section for dancewear outlets. Good luck! balletboy Answers to this message:
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