It is midday on Sunday and an hour until the first round of the adults’ Ballroom and Latin American competition. The car park of the leisure centre where the competition is being held is already packed, with cars circling, their drivers hoping that an elusive space will become available. Men and women make their way to the entrance. Most dancers are wearing a considerable amount of fake tan , their skin a deep shade of mahogany, in some cases with more than a hint of orange. The women wear heavy make-up with long false eyelashes designed to make their features standout from long distances under harsh lights. They generally have their hair slicked back into tight buns, sometimes with sharp side partings, elaborate styling and adornments that match the outfits they will be wearing. Most have already spent several hours getting ready. There is a nervous buzz of excitement and anticipation. The female dancers go off in search of the changing rooms to make the final transformation. ‘Are they running to time?’ a male dancer asks a friend from his dance school waiting outside, who smiles and says they might be running slightly early.
Inside, people are performing their finishing touches. Men and women are using small brushes to scrape the soles of their dancing shoes to ensure they will have the correct amount of grip on the floor. Dancers are eating food that they hope will give them an energy boost at the moment they need it—chocolate, bananas, energy drinks. Female dancers are anxiously checking themselves in the mirror—have I put enough lipstick on? Are my false lashes still in place securely? Couples are walking through their steps at the sides of the room. Dancers are stretching, jigging around, warming up. Spectators who have come to watch the dancers—their parents, friends, partners and siblings—are waiting in the tiered seating area. Other people who just happened to be at the leisure centre today, playing tennis or taking their children swimming, are watching from the balcony above, amused at the brightly coloured, revealing costumes on display below.
I am one of the dancers getting ready. My dress is bright red and covered with long tassels designed to spin out and catch people’s attention when I move. I wear it with high-heeled Ray Rose dancing shoes and matching red and white crystal jewellery. I look completely different from how I do in my everyday life as a university lecturer. ‘You look fantastic’, says a woman from my dancing school, who I have not spoken to before. One of the things I love about dancing is the camaraderie. I thank her, and admire her own costume, a beautiful blue dress covered in Swarovski crystals with feathers at the bottom. I need to find my dancing partner so that we can collect our number and pin it to his back before the competition begins. The compere’s voice comes over the loudspeaker: ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, we will play one general dance so that you can warm up before the adults’ first round’. Waltz music begins playing. The competition is about to begin.
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Introduction
This book explores what ballroom dancing means to those who take part in this form of dancing as part of their leisure activities today and considers how contemporary men and women negotiate the intrinsic gender roles underpinning the mainstream practice of the activity. ‘Ballroom and Latin American dancing’ is an umbrella term that incorporates a number of dances. It can be danced socially or competitively, the later sometimes being termed ‘DanceSport ’. In England, the ballroom (or modern) dances include Waltz , Quickstep , Foxtrot , Tango and Viennese Waltz . The Latin dances comprise the Cha Cha Cha , Rumba , Jive , Paso Doble and Samba . Other dances, like Salsa, Charleston, Rock ‘n’ Roll and Swing, may sometimes be included under the term ‘ballroom dancing’, but they did not feature at the dancing school studied for the current book.
Ballroom and Latin American dancing is a global phenomenon with England at its spiritual heart. England has played a crucial role as the home to prestigious competitions . Blackpool Dance Festival, which began in the Empress Ballroom in the Winter Gardens in 1920, is the most famous competition of its type in the world. In the 1950s, competitors from other countries began to compete at the event in greater numbers. By the 1980s, the special box reserved for overseas visitors on the south balcony of the ballroom had to be stopped due to overcrowding (Blackpool Dance Festival website). In recent years, large numbers of dancers from the USA, Japan, Italy and Germany have competed at the event, amongst those from fifty countries. Although comparatively few of the top competitors nowadays come from England compared to the past, England is still regarded as ‘the home of ballroom dancing’ by many. While the dancers in this book are not competing at the level of major open competitions , their participation in medallist competitions is influenced by the wider cultural and social history of Ballroom Dancing and the symbolism involved. As we will see in Chapter 2, dancing teachers in England (most notably from the Imperial Society of Teachers of Dance—ISTD) played a key role in setting dancing standards and norms for Ballroom and Latin dancing (ISTD 2004). Although globally there are now multiple bodies regulating ballroom dancing and training dance teachers, the ISTD remains the world’s leading and most respected dance examination board (Marion 2008). The ballroom technique books published by the ISTD are also used by the World DanceSport Federation —the world governing body for DanceSport —in order to inform the steps people are permitted to use in competitive dancing (Bosse 2015). In the UK, other bodies such as the International Dance Teachers’ Association (IDTA) and the National Association of Teachers of Dancing (NATD) are also influential dance qualifications bodies.
Ballroom and Latin American dancing is simultaneously local and global. It is local in the sense that dances are experienced in a tangible and personal way in one’s local community or dancing school (in the example that opened this book, a leisure centre in suburban Southern England). However, dancers also belong to a wider community of practice or as Bosse (2015) terms it, an ‘affinity group’, who choose to spend time together orientated towards a common purpose. Dancers who know ‘the basics’ can go to a class or ballroom anywhere and make a connection with others due to their shared knowledge of the steps and dance norms and behaviours. The close physical proximity may lead to a more intimate connection with people in the dance community compared to how they feel about others in their local environment (Bosse 2015). At the same time, the internet, including discussion forums, videos on YouTube, websites selling costumes and instructional DVDs are all important in giving ballroom dancing its global flavour. Top competitors travel internationally to compete, and so dance fashions in clothing, hair, make-up and transformations in steps and style travel with them. TV programmes such as Strictly Come Dancing and Dancing with the Stars have taken this type of dancing to a wider audience. By partnering celebrities with professional dancers, this enabled the audience to gain some insight into the highs and low of people learning to dance and taking part in dancing competitions. Of course, there are a number of distinct features of such TV programmes given celebrity culture, the televised nature of the show and the public voting process, and the focus on a dancers’ ‘journeys’ and transformation. However, such programmes have boosted attendance at dance schools and interest in this form of dance more broadly. In contemporary consumer culture, dance can be a ‘big business’ concern, with the potential to be commoditized and marketed as such, as well as used in the advertising campaigns of other products (Hewer and Hamilton 2010).
Of significance to the exploration of gender roles , Ballroom and Latin dances are danced in partnerships, traditionally involving a man and a woman, with set expectations for behaviour. Although some forms of dancing such as Capoeira (Owen 2014) and Morris dancing (Spracklen and Henderson 2013) have been highlighted as having a higher proportion of male participants, Ballroom and Latin American dancing tends to attract more women than men, yet the common image of Ballroom and Latin dancers centres around male–female partnerships. While Ballroom and Latin American dancing allows self-expression, it also reflects social mores and tradition including those surrounding gender roles ( Marion 2008; Bosse 2015). Like other forms of partner dancing including the Argentine Tango (Davis 2015) and Salsa dancing (Wieschiolek 2003) in Ballroom and Latin, the woman traditionally follows the male lead. The distinctive roles for men and women in ballroom dancing can be linked to its emergence in the 1800s in industrial society at a time of increased emphasis on the separate spheres for men and women, with men being associated with work outside of the home and women with domestic labour within it, and men being positioned as the head of the household (Aldrich 2009; Ericksen 2011). The roles for men and women have been codified by the examination boards and dance teachers’ associations and have been described in various ‘how to dance’ books and manuals.
The distinct roles for men and women...