By Halley Bondy
NY DAILY NEWS

As a teen, Arthur Aviles didn’t dare entertain becoming a dancer.

Raised by Puerto Rican parents in the South Bronx, he knew to avoid anything that threatened masculine norms.

“The male-female thing was very strict in my family,” says Aviles, 44.

“I thought there was one persona to be, and dance was not in that persona.”

Trained in wrestling, diving, gymnastics and swimming, Aviles was admitted to Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., where he learned that his true calling was outside his family’s norms.

READ MORE: http://www.nydailynews.com/latino/2008/05/08/2008-05-08_arthur_aviles_boricua_tai_chi.html

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