 From ballroom to DanceSport: aesthetics, athletics, and body culture.
Author: Picart, Caroline Joan S Published: 2006 Drawing on recent media portrayals and her own experience, author and dancer Caroline Joan S Picart explores ballroom dancing and its more 'sporty' equivalent, DanceSport, suggesting that they are reflective of larger social, political, and cultural tensions. The past few years have seen a resurgence in the popularity of ballroom dance, as well as increasing international anxiety over how and whether to transform it into an Olympic sport. Writing as a participant-critic, Picart suggests that both are crucial sites where bodies are packaged as racialised, sexualised, nationalised, and classed objects. In addition she argues that as the choreography, costuming, and genre of ballroom and DanceSport continue to evolve, these theatrical productions are aestheticised and constructed to encourage commercial appeal, using the narrative frame of the competitive melodaram to heighten audience interest. |
