Becoming Beautiful

Ballroom Dance in the American Heartland

Joanna Bosse

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780252096983
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

In Becoming Beautiful, Joanna Bosse explores the transformations undergone by the residents of a Midwestern town when they step out on the dance floor for the very first time.
 
Bosse uses sensitive fieldwork as well as her own immersion in ballroom culture to lead readers into a community that springs up around ballroom dance. The result is a portrait of the real people who connect with others, change themselves, and join a world that foxtrots to its own rules, conventions, and rewards. Bosse's eye for revealing, humorous detail adds warmth and depth to discussions around critical perspectives on the experiences the dance hall provides, the nature of partnership and connection, and the notion of how dancing allows anyone to become beautiful.

1

The Classification of Style

Pete, a retired, single dancer in his seventies and a regular attendee at the Regent’s Friday night dances, leaned in close during our swing at a Friday night dance, and in a playful, conspiratorial tone said, “You know, I really think this is a foxtrot, but they get mad at me when I don’t do what I’m supposed to,” nodding to the deejay booth. Continuing the conspiratorial gag, I looked over my shoulder before leaning in to whisper, “I’m game. Let’s do it.” He smiled broadly, and we alternated between his own idiosyncratic versions of foxtrot and swing for the rest of the song.

Charmed by his sense of humor and his unwillingness to completely conform to social norms, I was always happy to dance with Pete. I danced most often with him at the Rose Bowl, a rough-and-tumble country music bar in Urbana, Illinois, where he was a fixture for the Sunday night performance of the house band, the Western Wheels. He felt more comfortable in the relaxed atmosphere of the Rose Bowl, and never once there did he signal me so explicitly that he was hoping to, or even about to, switch genres. At the Rose Bowl, he just did it. He was an unorthodox dancer, to be sure, mixing music and dance genres together in unconventional ways, switching between dance genres several times within one song, and performing steps of his own creation. For this reason, many women ballroom dancers felt great ambivalence about dancing with Pete. In fact, he had originally intended on asking Monica to dance this song with him, but when she saw him headed her way, she quickly ran for the restroom.

Pete’s hesitance to dance a foxtrot to a musical example labeled as a swing on the dance card—and the fact that some women refused to dance with him for this fact—are suggestive of the myriad ways in which regulations and classification systems are maintained in social contexts where the explicit rules and regulations of competitions are not in play. Pete was mindful of the consequences for not adhering to the standards, and so he cued me as to what he was about to do as a courtesy. Had I exhibited any signs that I was uncomfortable with dancing “against the grain,” I am confident he would not have done so. Although a rarity at the Regent for his interest in bucking convention, Pete’s exception proves the rule. Most dancers welcomed the systems and standards and were not comfortable being left to their own devices.¹

Ballroom dance features elaborate classificatory systems that regulate dance genres, steps, styles, and detailed formulae for prescribing movement.² Knowledge of these conventions is gained through extensive study by advanced dancers and professionals who have invested considerable time educating themselves on the theory of ballroom dance. These dancers act as guardians of correct performance and define conformity as beautiful while disdaining nonconformity as rough or excessive. The guardians pass on this knowledge to amateurs through formal and informal channels, and they exact consequences on those individuals who violate the regulations for performances that are perceived to be more immediately gratifying but less technically proficient or sophisticated. These guardians are legitimated through official and informal organizations that distribute titles, ranks, and rankings such as president, treasurer, professional, amateur, teacher, student, social dancer, competitor (including a range of competition titles and placements), and so forth.³

The regulations, conventions, and classifications common to ballroom inform performance. Dictating the ways bodies move, regulations provide a sense of predictability and safety for ballroom participants, as discussed in chapter 2, while they also provide a framework within which dancers understand the value and beauty of their movement and their bodies. Like all practices of symbolic distinction (Bourdieu 1984), the categories are simultaneously conceptual, social, and material, embodied by the dancers themselves and legitimized by their ubiquity in dance contexts.

This chapter serves two purposes. The first is to provide a basic introduction to the tenets of ballroom dance through the various classification systems social dancers used. Elementary lessons in ballroom dance functioned as a catechism into these various systems and their meaning, and so all ballroom dance experiences were shaped by these cognitive and cultural frameworks. In addition to laying out some preliminary groundwork on the genre, I suggest that these dance classifications are simultaneously social classifications that serve to stratify individuals and groups according to their perception of the social order. In this framework, classification struggles become a site for class struggles, for they dictate a sense of place in the social order and thereby fulfill the social processes of inclusion and exclusion. They are important because class struggle occurs not only over valued resources or for access to positions of power. The very definition of what is valued—and relatedly, what is beautiful—and the understanding of one’s position within this social field are themselves the objects of struggle.

As a middlebrow leisure activity, ballroom dance is caught between the high and low within the larger stratification of American dance styles. Many couple-dance traditions performed in the United States have strong connections to lower-class communities. The range of southern two-step styles, Cajun, Texas, and country, for example, celebrate their deep connection, past and present, with America’s white, rural working class. Others, such as swing, salsa, and tango, have experienced some upward mobility, but still trade on their roots in disenfranchised minority communities in the United States and elsewhere. On the other end of the spectrum are presentational, art-dance traditions such as ballet and modern, which signify European high society and U.S. elites. Over the last century ballroom proponents have navigated this terrain in a number of ways, rhetorically moving between elitism and populism, art and sport, presentational theater and participatory leisure, virtue and vice, depending on changing social contexts in order to stake a legitimate claim for ballroom performance among white, middle- and upper-middle-class dancers (Cook 1998; Wagner 1997).

In this way ballroom dance affinity groups have the potential to function as Weberian “status groups” or Bourdieu’s “classes,” which, the latter argues, are shaped by objective conditions, the product of a configuration of capital types including a range of symbolic dimensions. Class, therefore, cannot be quantified or reduced solely to economic figures. In fact, class is often defined as much by its “being-perceived as by its being” (Bourdieu 1984, 483). “Class identity is itself a matter of perception and conception as well as being materially constituted” (Swartz 1997, 148). The symbolic dimensions of class struggle, however, remain less studied than the more evident economic and material dimensions. Ballroom performance is constitutive and generative of class disposition, and it serves as a symbolic dimension of class struggle for middle-class dancers seeking to perform a unique style of rationalized (and thus classified and class-based) human movement.⁴

To this end, I approach the classification systems of ballroom dancing as a means for articulating the “legitimate vision of the social world and its division” (Swartz 1997, 147) according to this particular group of middle-class, midwestern ballroom dancers, who have attempted to distinguish ballroom from lower-class couple dance traditions and to align it with European classical forms. In particular, I have identified four themes that emerge from these classificatory systems, four discreet but interrelated sets of values that ballroom dancers understand to be linked to upper-class sensibilities, practice, and ideology: an emphasis on a high degree of specialization in performance; the demonstration of control over the body and its movement; the rationalization of movement and the ideas articulated by it, especially as mediated by language and other symbols; and an association with Western Europe. These values served to define a beautiful performance within a particular class-based sensibility that privilege those expressed in the presentational art forms of Western Europe. Through the various classification systems employed under the ballroom umbrella and described below, these values are enacted and manifest, structuring bodies, movement, and sensory experience for ballroom dancers. Performing these values within a couple-dance genre position, ballroom dancers hold a distinctive place in the world of American dance and communicate their particular class position as being betwixt and between, as middle-class Americans distinctly are (Bourdieu 1984; Morin 2008).⁵

I use the concept of rationalization here in both the colloquial sense of dancers justifying and explaining the choices they made as well as the definition more often used in social sciences that indicates the primacy given to logical and calculated decision-making apparatuses over more traditional or emotional (and presumably less systematic or efficient) value systems. In the early decades of the twentieth century, and even before, the rationalization of movement was an important strategy for wresting ballroom from the fray of lower-class social dances and aligning it with upper-class values. Whether the logic was based on high-art values of control, line, and sophistication; or medicine and sport science; or commercial success, it was (and still is) important for dancers to know that ballroom is understood (by themselves and their wider community) as being driven by universal principles accepted by American middle- and upper-class society rather than in the service of bodily pleasure or emotional states (Foster 1995, 1996; Tomko 1999; Wagner 1997).

Juliet McMains (2006) and Edward Myers (1984) suggest that the codification of ballroom on the part of the U.S. ballroom dance industry was a means for ensuring its economic viability. Eliminating improvisation and therefore eliding the distinctions between social, theatrical, and competitive practice was, McMains argues, “necessary for the economic viability of the ballroom dance industry, a strategic marketing tool utilized at least since the 1910s” to codify the genre into a “saleable product” of dance instruction (64). I would add to this argument that the industry was only successful in this tactic because the notion of increased control and rationalization of the body and its movement was aligned with the class disposition of U.S. ballroom dancers. In fact, rather than being a strategy thrust upon dancers for the economic viability of the industry, the gesture might best be perceived as a choice made by the dancers themselves—as dancers, consumers, and leaders of dance organizations—in order to symbolically lay claim to a particular class position by virtue of the literal control over the body that ballroom promoted.

In this light, and in light of the many claims about ballroom’s connections to middle- and upper-class sensibilities (Cook 1998; Malnig 1997; McMains 2006; Myers 1984), I would urge caution in the temptation to reduce the middle-class dispositions performed in ballroom to an exercise of social dominance alone. This chapter suggests that while the act of performing ballroom dance is an articulation of a particular middle-class position, and that position is one of power in relation to the majority of the world’s populations, it is also one of having less than (and perhaps being and feeling less than) the haute bourgeoisie on the opposite end of the metaphorical social ladder with whom the middle classes are more likely to identify. The undertones of fear and frustration at the betwixt-and-between-ness that mark the stories dancers told me about their experiences suggest that performing class is not always about performing power, or at least not always only about performing power. In the case of the Regent dancers, there was also a degree of working through doubt, fear, and feelings of disempowerment, also a product of being middle class, that were simultaneously at play. And finally, in the quotidian reality of moving through the world, it is also about the desire to be recognized as beautiful by those with the power to define it. Through the rationalized systems for classifying performance described below, dancers articulated a vision for the social world and their place in it, one accompanied by contradictory experiences of privilege and inferiority.

The Ballroom Umbrella

Referencing a Russian folktale, Mark Slobin (2000) likens klezmer music to a magical mushroom providing shelter, if not intoxication, to numerous and diverse musical refugees. Although klezmer is most widely recognized as a heritage tradition, Slobin states that “under the klezmer umbrella” lie many types of musicians and styles of performance that reflect “the power of American music to recombine and redefine itself” (3–4). Similarly, the large umbrella of ballroom performance encompasses a variety of dance and music traditions, styles, and steps with ethnically, geographically, and temporally diverse origins that are ordered within multiple, embedded, and overlapping classification systems. The overview of the most salient of these systems offered below is most deeply informed by my fieldwork within a particular local context of social ballroom dancers in the midwestern United States, but it takes into account practices common throughout the country and will have some resonance for various international contexts as well.

DANCESPORT AND SOCIAL DANCING

One of the major distinctions within ballroom performance is the line that is drawn between competitive practice and social dancing. Competitive ballroom dancing practices have increasingly become known by the term “DanceSport” (or, generically, “dancesport”) in the United States and abroad; however, in my experience, the term was not used frequently in central Illinois. Instead, “competition” was the general gloss for what many competitors might call “dancesport.” Competition ballroom combines athleticism, theater and spectacle, art and expressivity within the drama of elimination contests, prizes, and international prestige. Such contests have aired on television for years and have been the subject of numerous feature films (such as the American and Japanese versions of Shall We Dance?, Dance with Me, and Strictly Ballroom). Competitive practices are widely known today through a number of recent and highly successful reality television shows (such as the aforementioned Dancing with the Stars and So You Think You Can Dance?).

Competition ballroom is, by and large, a “presentational” form (Turino 2008), focusing on rehearsed, pre-choreographed routines and no partner exchange. Hallmarks of the style include extraordinary choreographic virtuosity, as defined by a high degree of physical control over all muscle groups and a concern for visual line and stylized expression. Couples perform in “heats” (note the sport terminology) with several other couples of similar capability, both for judges and for enthusiastic audience members, who shout words of encouragement over the music. As such, these competitions (of which there are “championships,” “cups,” and “games,” among many others) are unique events, reminiscent of both sporting events and classical dance concerts. Preparing amateur students for such international, regional, and collegiate events is the bread and butter of many dance studios, and this is especially true of franchised organizations such as the Fred Astaire and Arthur Murray Studios.⁶

Competition dancing is a world unto itself, with a range of formal organizations and institutions that govern performance, pedagogy, and commerce. The twentieth century was marked by the proliferation and jostling of formal organizations as they transitioned from independent regional bodies to national and now international and “worldwide” organizations in the business of governing ballroom dance. At all levels, these organizations are typically led by “insiders,” holding rank and title, and are driven by a desire to promote dancing, most explicitly (but not solely) as an Olympic-worthy athletic and competitive practice (dancesport) (McMains 2006).

The World DanceSport Federation (WDSF), known until 2011 as the International DanceSport Federation (IDSF), is recognized by the International Olympic Committee as the worldwide governing body for dancesport and wheelchair dancesport. The IDSF was founded in 1957 under a different name, International Council of Amateur Dancers, which it held until 1990, when formal ballroom dance competition organizations heightened efforts in their ongoing campaign for Olympic-sport status (Braun 1996). The WDSF hosts “national members,” the national-level affiliate organizations that report to the WDSF. For instance, USA Dance, formerly known as USABDA (the United States Amateur Ballroom Dancers Association, Inc.), is the national governing body for dancesport in the United States, with more than 150 regional chapters nationwide supporting both social and competitive ballroom dancing. Their informational materials state that the organization was founded with the mission of establishing ballroom dance as an Olympic sport and also that about 70 percent of USA Dance members are recreational ballroom dancers. “For most dancers, it’s about having fun, making new friends, and staying fit. For the athlete, it’s also the competitive experience” (http://usadance.org, accessed September 3, 2012...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Becoming Beautiful
• 1 The Classification of Style
• 2 Rules of Engagement: Marketing Safety and Managing Risk in the Ballroom
• 3 Bringing Coherence to the Sensuous Life: Connection and Partnership among Social Dancers
• 4 Performing Race, Remaking Whiteness
• 5 Joy, Flow, and Personal Transformation
• Appendix: Ballroom Canon
• Notes
• References
• Index