The dance world doesn’t always escape the land of television without a bruise or two. There’s nothing the camera loves more than a bloody toenail. And then there’s “Pose,” on FX. This look at the ballroom scene in New York City is equal parts grit and glamour. Its horrifying moments don’t have anything to do with perpetuating stereotypes about a dancer’s pain, but with the brutality of AIDS, which devastated the dance community.

The message of “Pose,” which begins in the late 1980s, is not about style, as you might think, but about integrity and persistence. It gets at the essence of dance : How do you make something out of nothing? You use what is distinctly your own. The body. Imagination. And for many of the “Pose” characters, that’s all they have.

While the acting and writing can be uneven, the show has an undeniable commitment to dance that is present even when the characters aren’t performing or rehearsing, just talking and laughing and crying. “Pose” is something of a peek into the private lives of dancers, in which the rigor is the same for all — it doesn’t matter if their work is done in a studio, on a stage or on the piers.