A Thought on 'Dance Culture'


 Photo: Josh Gordon via Unsplash.com



My inquiry is based around the financial behaviours and attitudes of professional dancers and how these are influenced by ‘dance culture’. 

 

‘Dance culture’ itself has been extraordinarily difficult to define, given the relatively sparse existing literature on it and the varied experiences of individual dancers. The ambiguity of the term was one of my main motivations for including it in my inquiry, since clearly more research and discussion is required. Furthermore, it may even be that ‘dance culture’ spills into other areas of our lives, such as personal finance, but also into the way we think and behave in other situations. 

 

I’ll start with my experience and opinion. In my opinion, ‘dance culture’ denotes a culture of power imbalances between dancer and choreographer/director/teacher, a culture of self-sacrifice, and a culture of obedience, acquiescence and perfectionism. This mainly came through my professional training, where I interacted with teachers and directors that were unnecessarily unyielding and didn’t treat dancers as human beings. However, this naturally is just my own experience and it has been interesting to read other people’s thoughts through the survey responses I have received. 

 

The reason that I particularly wanted to write this post is rather interesting because, on the surface, it appears to not be related to dance or ‘dance culture’ at all. This time last week, I started feeling unwell and, long story short, was admitted to hospital at 3am. This was my first time in hospital for an emergency since I was 11, and being very unwell and alone was a scary and isolating experience. I was discharged the next day with antibiotics and sent home to rest and recover. Over the days I started to feel better but still not completely back to normal. I felt tired, weak and stressed because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to eat anything or keep any food down. I tried to do basic exercise but kept feeling unwell. I became extremely angry and frustrated at myself and my body for not ‘bouncing back’ immediately. 

 

Only now, a week later, do I truly feel 100% better. Having had a bit of time to reflect, I wonder whether ‘dance culture’ might have played a part in my impatience to recover. As dancers, we are taught to take pride in our bodies and keep them in optimum condition. The fact that my body had ‘let me down’ made me feel weak and unworthy. I despised feeling so fragile and I felt that perhaps I was being overdramatic. I wanted to go back to doing professional class, working and doing all my normal activities immediately. Even worse, I felt like I SHOULD have been able to do that and the fact that I couldn’t made me a ‘failure’ and that I wasn’t ‘tough’ enough. 

 

It’s very interesting how the subconscious messages we are fed during our training can influence even minute details of our lives. Obviously ‘dance culture’ is very individual and subjective, but I’m curious to see what others think, and hopefully carrying out my inquiry will shed some light on this (in my opinion), fascinating concept. 

Comments

  1. Shelley26 September 2021 at 10:32

    Really interesting stuff Alys! Coming from a musical theatre background and not a dance one, I don't know that much about dance culture apart from things I've gleaned from teachers over the years. I always found it interesting to observe the difference in attitude and teaching style between the three disciplines. The difference between stepping into a dance class from a singing or acting class was huge. One, we would be expected to wear make up while dancing but not in other classes. And two, there was definitely that feeling in dance rehearsals of the self-sacrifice you mentioned. Maybe they were old-school teachers but they seemed to value flexibility or amazing technique over treating your body with respect and care, which is hugely important for a long professional career I would have thought. If you were shaking, or pushing your body to its absolute limits, that meant you were hungry.
    Sorry to hear you were unwell! I think that feeling of impatience is really familiar to a lot of creative people. We are expected to be 'on' all the time and when our body is unable it's super frustrating. I was listening to a podcast in mod 2 that was chatting about the importance of separating ourselves from the job which I found really great (the Amarillo Project). They spoke about the need to see ourselves as a human when we wake up first thing, not as an actor, a dancer, a business or whatever. I think it's a tricky thing to turn that part of our brain off sometimes and just be a person who needs sleep and food and relaxation!
    Can't wait to read more about your research! x

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