Groshan Fabiola asked:


ight be a Dancing with the Stars first, when two men, actor Steve Guttenberg and Jonathan Roberts performed the “man-go” during an encore performance of Guttenberg’s tango number. His original partner, Anna Trebunskaya, was sick so husband and Dancing with the Stars contestant himself, Jonathan Roberts obliged to fill in for her. And if the reception to the highly enjoyable performance were any indication, one would think Dancing with the Stars network ABC ought to seriously consider having same-sex dance partners on the dancing competition.

Asked about the possibility, ABC top guns have stated that they are not necessarily opposed to the idea. It will surely open doors for *** ballroom dancing by having same-sex dance partners perform on a hugely popular show. However, they also expressed concerns over the sort of implications such a move can potentially have.

Internationally, *** ballroom already has a growing, if not established, professional circuit. Dance sport, after all, is already an event in the *** Games, the world’s largest sporting event organized by LGBT athletes, set up in 1982. However, this has not reached American shores until late 2007 when the North American Same-Sex Partner Dance Association (NASSPDA) was born. The NASSPDA is a non-profit membership organization which seeks to provide “consistent standards, guidelines, definitions for same-sex competitions and the coordination of scheduling and dissemination” for competitive and social same-sex ballroom dancing in North America .

While there may be some who are initially averse to the idea, there are those who point out that American television has grown exponentially open to *** culture than, say, ten years ago. And while the memorable Dancing with the Stars performance was an accidental comic relief more than anything, it did present the potential of *** ballroom not only as entertaining but more so as a serious variation of the sport.

Website content