Booted for Porn :: Canadian Ballet School Kicks Out Student

A 22-year-old aspiring ballet star from Denmark was kicked out of a Canadian ballet school after finding out he appeared in gay pornography, the CBC reports.

Jeppe Hansen has danced around the world and studied in Montreal, New York City and in Denmark (dancing for the Queen of Denmark) before joining the prestigious Royal Winnipeg Ballet School in September 2012. Hansen even got a scholarship to the school's professional division.

Officials, however, expelled the dancer soon after finding out he previously appeared in gay pornography.

"They told me ... they didn't have any space for me because I did porn," Hansen told the CBC. He added that administrators asked him to sign a letter stating that he voluntarily quit the program. Hansen did not want to leave the RWB, but he felt the administrators made up their minds otherwise.

He also told Canada's National Post, "I was definitely kicked out of school. They didn't really give me any options. They actually stated that they knew what was going on and they didn't approve of it and they couldn't have me at the school any longer."

The British newspaper the Daily Mail reports that some his peers found images relating to his porn work on Tumblr and told the school's artistic director. Soon, Hansen was called for a meeting and told to leave.

"I don't blame the Winnipeg Ballet," he told the Post. "I grew up in the ballet world, I know how conservative and high brow, as they call it, it is ... I do understand to a certain degree why they made the decision they did."

Hansen says he did porn as a side project and for an opportunity to express himself in a new and artistic way.

"You cannot be in a company or with the school or whatever because you've decided to take a different standpoint artistically - not because you physically can't do it, or because you're not good enough," Hansen told the CBC.

"Being told because you're doing something else that's interrupting with what we think you can do is really difficult because they know it's your passion, they know that that's what you live off. They know my entire identity's built on it. So it was really difficult to be told that and to be told, 'You know what? There's no space for you here.'"

Hansen, who goes under the name Jett Black in his adult films, told the CBC he left the school in late March. In April, he left Winnipeg, the capital and largest city of Manitoba, Canada, and moved to New York City to pursue gay porn full-time. He said that porn producers approached him while he was in Montreal but he initially declined their offers. Earlier this year, however, he changed his mind, after becoming frustrated by the boundaries of ballet.

"It was more important for me to be me and to do the things I wanted to do for once, and not what everyone else wanted," Hansen told the CBC. "Being a ballet dancer is restrictive. Everyone tells you what you have to do, how to look, what to weigh, how to perform [and] be the artist you are."

He appeared in his first gay porn film in February with the website CockyBoys. Emmy-award-winning producer Jake Jaxson, who says he is trying to blur the lines between mainstream media and porn, owns the site. He says he wants his adult films to revolve more around plots but still have sex scenes.

"The films are meant to be entertaining and sexual at the same time," Jaxson told the CBC. "I don't like movies that show young people's heads cut off or their arms ripped from their body. And everyone goes and watches that ... and those performers are not looked at as being outside of the mainstream. Personally, I find that not acceptable for me in my kind of entertainment, but I just choose not to pay for it."

Hansen added that no one can define what art is to him and that "art is what you and I define art by."

His profile on CockyBoys says, "Jett Black has been an artist his entire life. He loves to move his body and perform in front of other people, so you can see why making porn is no different to him."

Though he is enjoying a full-time career as a porn star, he says he misses being a full-time dancer, and hopes to return back to ballet.

"It's such a big part of your life. I really do [miss dancing] and your body also misses it," he said. "My dancing career is not over. And when they [officials at the Royal Winnipeg Ballet] told me that, I thought the same thing. I'm taking a break from performing and I'll take this break until I find a place where I can fit in as a ballet dancer."

The CBC reached out to the RWB about the incident, but the school said, "The organization has policies and procedures in place for the benefit of all."