Los Bikers by Dënver

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What’s going on here then? An epigraph from Yukio Mishima…an Air-like song…a pair of boys stripping down to their underwear to play bondage games…gorgeous dancers in white briefs performing amid statuary… Yes, it gets my vote.

Dënver are from Chile, and the song is Los Bikers from their 2010 album Música, Gramática, Gimnasia. I’d tell you who directed the video but they’re not very clear about that themselves. There’s more video and music on the inevitable Dënver Myspace page. Via Homotography.

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Previously on { feuilleton }
The Lady Is Dead and The Irrepressibles
Forbidden Colours
Mishima’s Rite of Love and Death

Pas de Deux by Norman McLaren

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Norman McLaren’s 1968 film is not only one of the greatest ballet films ever made, it’s also an astonishing combination of high-contrast photography and optical printing. Choreography by Ludmilla Chiriaeff, dance by Margaret Mercier and Vincent Warren, music by Dobre Constantin and the Folk Orchestra of Romania. YouTube isn’t the ideal medium to watch anything like this but there’s now a quality copy here in all its 13-minute glory. If you’ve never seen it, do so before it vanishes.

Previously on { feuilleton }
Norman McLaren

The Classical alibi in physique photography

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Stowitts photographed by Nickolas Muray.

The title is from two gallery pages at the Queer Arts Resource which runs through a history of the old subterfuge whereby homoerotic pictures were decorated to look suitably Greek or Roman. This seldom fooled anyone, even in Oscar Wilde’s day, but it no doubt helped to keep the studios out of the law courts. Amid the plaster columns and antique props there’s a card I hadn’t seen before promoting dancer and artist Hubert Stowitts whose role as a satyr is one of the most memorable moments in Rex Ingram’s 1926 film of The Magician.

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Jim Galahad.

Also at Queer Arts is a copy of The Dying Gaul with a model who’s in the peak of health and a lot more well-hung than most Greek sculptures.

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This picture is something I found ages ago on a lost web page and now have a tenuous reason to post here. What looks like erotica is actually a fashion shoot (and he’s wearing swimming trunks) but it shows how the Classical mode persists. He looks like he wants to see more of Jim’s sword…

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
The gay artists archive
The men with swords archive

Weekend links 80

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Niels Klim’s descent to the planet Nazar from the 1845 edition of Nicolai Klimii Iter Subterraneum (Niels Klim’s Underground Travels) (1741) by Ludvig Holberg.

BibliOdyssey posts illustrations from different editions of Ludvig Holberg’s satirical fantasy, appends the usual informative links and draws our attention Stories of a Hollow Earth at The Public Domain Review. I’d not come across the latter site before but it’s now bookmarked.

• While the economy of Europe continues to circle the toilet bowl it’s good to know that our Prime Minister is focusing on the important issues such as…limiting access to internet pornography. “Look at the implementation, and no matter where you stand on porn, I think you’ll see this plan is going to cause a lot of problems on its way to the eventual fail bin,” says Violet Blue. I was wondering how the four targeted ISPs would feel about a filtering plan that would drive many new customers elsewhere. The Register reports their response which comes down to offering guidelines rather than attempting the difficult and contentious task of filtering millions of websites.

• Related: Won’t you fuck off, Reg Bailey, in which the report by the small Christian pressure group that started all the fuss is eviscerated. | Elsewhere: Porn is good for society says Anna Arrowsmith, while Tristan Taormino asserts that “writing and publishing erotica, especially for minorities, is a political act.” Then there’s Pornsaints, “an artistic approach to porn, a pornographic approach to art, a pornartistic approach to religion.”

• In the music world: Richard H Kirk and Peter Care discuss Cabaret Voltaire and Johnny YesNo, Roy Harper talks to Alexis Petridis, and soundtrack composer Cliff Martinez is interviewed (and pictured playing a Cristal).

Witch’s Cradle at Strange Flowers (Maya Deren, Marcel Duchamp and Peggy Guggenheim), The Ghosts of Senate House, London, and Aleister Crowley’s Abbey of Thelema as it is today.

• RIP Frank Kameny, co-founder of the Mattachine Society, and a tireless gay rights advocate from the early 1960s on.

Bruce Weber photographs some of the dancers from Matthew Bourne’s Dance Company.

Terry Gilliam says “I used to think I could will things into existence. Not any more.”

• Charts at Business Insider: What the Wall Street protesters are so angry about.

Five From…: assorted wit and wisdom in the Tumblr labyrinth.

• Glass art by Jasmine Targett.

Ballard Geocoded.

Porno Base (1982) by 23 Skidoo | Kylie Minogue (2003) by Satanicpornocultshop | Tantric Porno (live) (2009) by Bardo Pond.

Jean-Philippe Guillemain’s dancers

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Mathieu by Jean-Philippe Guillemain.

A collection of male dancers pose beside the usual complement of agency models in the portfolio of French photographer Jean-Philippe Guillemain. Are all European dancers this attractive or does he just have a good eye? See the others on his site.

Previously on { feuilleton }
Danseur Noble
The tights have it
Torero
Eonism and Eonnagata
Tiger Lily
Chris Nash
Peter Reed and Salomé After Dark
Felix D’Eon
Dancers by John Andresen
Youssef Nabil
Images of Nijinsky