The gay dance legacy: July 24, 1980. (From the Advocate Archives).

As celebrated dancer Marcelo Gomes formally comes out in this issue, The Advocate looks back 22 years to a special dance issue that featured two out gay dancers and a history of one of dance's most influential gay impresarios, Sergey Pavlovich Diaghilev (head of the legendary Ballet Russe from 1909 till his death in 1929). Of Diaghilev, reporter Barry Laine wrote, "Gayness and `modernism' [are] intimately intertwined ... and Diaghilev's circle reveals the growth and workings of that relationship. There was no intention of rhetoric or purposeful education but simply the natural stamp of one's life upon one's art."

Laine also profiled contemporary dancers James J. Mellon, who was then starting in the Broadway revival of West Side Story, and Christopher Beck, who in 1980 led a critically acclaimed San Francisco--based avant-garde dance company that frequently addressed gender-bending and surreal sexual themes. "[My work] goes beyond homoerotic themes, I believe," Beck said. "I'm striving to balance Out `male' and `female,' `form' and `feeling.' This is a very important aspect of the gay aesthetic--if there is one."