There has long been a popular perception of a connection between ballet and homosexuality, a connection that, for strategic reasons, has often been denied by those in the dance world. "A Queer History of the Ballet" focuses on how, as makers and as audiences, queer men and women have helped to develop many of the texts, images, and legends of ballet. Further, the book explores the ways in which, from the nineteenth century into the twentieth, ballet has been a means of conjuring homosexuality - of enabling some degree of expression and visibility for people who were otherwise declared illegal and obscene.