2018 Theses Bachelor's

In This Project of Undoing: Practices of Resistance and Imagination in the Collegiate Ballroom Dance Community

Song, Crystal

This paper explores strains of resistance within the practices of competitive collegiate ballroom dancers. Drawing on the participatory epistemology of performance ethnography, it examines the ongoing project of queering ballroom, a dance form that has historically reproduced hegemonic ideas about race, gender, and sexuality. This paper identifies moments of utopian performance enacted by collegiate ballroom dancers—particularly those who are queer and/or of color—that destabilize the competitive standard of the white, heterosexual couple, facilitating new aesthetic and choreographic possibilities. Such moments flex against the boundaries of normative partnership, gesturing towards alternatives and making the collegiate ballroom community an increasingly inclusive, accessible, and creative space. In centering the embodied knowledges of collegiate dancers, this project pursues an epistemology that mirrors the proximity and vulnerability of partner dancing itself.