CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2007
| Author | Lanyi, Katalin |
|---|---|
| Title | Same-Sex Ballroom Dance. A Challenge to Patriarchal Gender Order |
| Summary | In my MA thesis I analyze how women’s same-sex competitive ballroom dance challenges patriarchal order. Same-sex relations between women challenge the patriarchal order. Ballroom dance is a performance of heterosexuality and conventional gender roles. It is a symbolic representation of male-female sexual and social relationships. I argue that women’s same-sex ballroom dance challenges these patriarchal relations by disconnecting gender from dance roles and creating more balanced roles. The analysis is based on semi-structured interviews with nine dancers and two dance teachers and participant observation. First I discuss what motivating factors there are for women to pursue same-sex ballroom dance. Then I analyze the argument of challenging patriarchal order. Although same-sex dance imported the imbalance of power between leader and follower from two-sex dance with the technique, it has a potential to challenge this order by disconnecting sex and gender from the dance roles. Dancers are free to choose a role and it is not prescribed based on sex. They can switch these roles, too. Intimate metacommunication do not relate to the leading following division in same-sex dance. Same-sex ballroom dance can also diminish some of the asymmetries of ballroom dance. Further, women are not expected to perform femininity in their appearance in competitions. There is an absence of sexist narrative and an absence of age and body shape expectations. |
| Supervisor | Timar, Eszter |
| Department | Gender Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2007/lanyi_katalin.pdf |
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