JAMES B. WHITESIDE.
James B. Whiteside was 16 he saw Matthew Bourne’s gender-swap version of Swan Lake in London. “And it opened my eyes to a whole new world of possibility,” recalls the then-budding ballet dancer. “I was fairly comfortable with myself at that point so I was in the process of coming out and seeing his take on Swan Lake shook me in a wonderful way. Societally you get complacent and unless you are shaken out of it it’s really hard to figure out what you want and what your vision is.”
Nineteen years later, James is a principal dancer with the American Ballet Theatre and he’s looking to shake things up when it comes to the heteronormative stories that dominate the artform.
