Current Sociology

Please welcome our Sociologist of the Month for November 2023, Yen Nee Wong (School of Social Policy, Sociology, and Social Research, University of Kent, and School of Applied Sciences, Edinburgh Napier University, UK). Their article for Current Sociology LGBT+ ballroom dancers and their shoes: Fashioning the queer self into existence is Open Access.

Yen Nee Wong

Could you please tell us about yourself? How did you come to your field of study?

Y.N. Wong: I am an interdisciplinary feminist sociologist working on the themes of gender, sexuality, queer theory, embodiment, media representation and sociology of dance, with a focus on equality dancing, more commonly known as same-sex ballroom dancing. I currently work as an ESRC (SeNSS) Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Kent, School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research, and am shortly transitioning into a Research Fellow role with Edinburgh Napier University.

I first became interested in researching in the field of equality dancing due to my initial involvement as a dancer, then later a photographer in the competitive ballroom dancing scene in the United Kingdom. I remembered first dancing in the mainstream scene, observing the normative ways in which masculinity and femininity were understood and presented on the dancefloor, feeling awkward about my own gender presentation and disturbed by the limited visibility and persistent discrimination experienced by LGBT+ dancers in same-sex dance partnerships. Later in my dancing years, I discovered the equality dance scene in London, and recalled rejoicing in a new found freedom to do ballroom dancing differently, to be able to partner with people of any gender, dance any roles and dress in a manner which matched my gendered being. When I finally realised the importance of contesting essentialist, heteronormative notions of gender and gendered roles perpetuated through the practice of traditional ballroom dancing, I wondered how the perceptibly transgressive practices of equality dancers might be able to encourage and inform more diverse conceptualisations from the perspective of inclusivity and diversity. These experiences inspired my PhD work which set out to understand how LGBT+ dancers’ materialise their gender and sexuality on the dance floor through equality dancing. This work later sparked my fascination with the queering of partner dancing and how this is represented in the media through reality TV programmes such as Strictly Come Dancing and Dancing on Ice.

What prompted you to research the area of your article, “LGBT+ ballroom dancers and their shoes: Fashioning the queer self into existence”?

Y.N. Wong: Alongside performative acts, material artefacts is a key enabler of gender expression on the dancefloor. Dance shoes constantly emerge as a critical theme in my research and interactions with LGBT+ dancers. Despite the powerful social relationship that ballroom dancers (myself including) develop with their shoes, the embeddedness of mundane, ordinary objects like shoes in the embodied routines of our everyday lives often means they tend to go unnoticed. The lack of empirical studies focusing on dance shoes as a key object of investigation, together with its significance to dancers and its potential to inform more holistic understanding of performativity prompted this focused research on shoes as part of my wider PhD project on the identity work of equality dancers.

What do you see as the key findings of your article?

Y.N. Wong: There are two key findings. First, material objects such as shoes are central to the processes of identity construction. Materiality of artefacts, time, bodies and place influence the ways in which equality dancers reiteratively mobilise the traditional symbolic values of dance shoes to materialise subversive identities. Second, attributing agency to both material artefacts and human agents facilitates an interrogation of the multilayered interactions between them, promoting a holistic examination of the performative constitution of social identities which gives credit to subversive agents emerging in the micro-moments.

What are the wider social implications of your research in the current social climate? How do you think things will change in the future?

British reality TV shows such as Strictly Come Dancing and Dancing on Ice have in the recent years inspired greater media visibility and public discourse around same-sex dancing and whether such representations should be featured on these programmes. My research sits within this climate of cultural shifts in the understanding of ballroom dancing. I demonstrate the possibilities that equality dancing holds in deconstructing dominant gender discourse in traditional ballroom dancing, and invite a societal shift towards more inclusive practices which celebrates diversity and difference. Based on the findings of my ESRC-funded postdoctoral research project which examines the media representation of same-sex dancing, I predict that the field of ballroom dancing will evolve to encompass more gender diversity and gender equality, and that increasing opportunities will emerge for ballroom dancers to articulate non-normative gendered and sexual bodies. Despite this climate of optimism, it remains to be examined the extent to which cultural cisgenderism prevails in the ballroom dancing world and how trans-inclusivity can be achieved within the gender segregated, competitive scene.

Do you have any links to images, documents or other pieces of research which build on or add to the article? Or a suggested reading list?

Y.N. Wong: Other research outputs from my PhD and ESRC post-doctoral projects focusing on equality dancing and media representation of same-sex dancing include:

- Wong, Y.N. (2023) Gender and sexuality performances among LGBT+ equality dancers: Photo-elicitation as a method of inquiry. International Journal of Qualitative Methods. https://doi.org/10.1177/16094069231182015.
- Wong, Y. N., Harman, V., and Owen, C. (2021). Analysing media reactions to male/male dance partnerships on British reality TV shows: Inclusive Masculinity in Strictly Come Dancing and Dancing on Ice, International Journal of Sociology of Leisure. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41978-021-00087-2.
- Harman, V., and Wong, Y. N. (2020). Same-sex pairings on Strictly Come Dancing: LGBTQ+ identity and leisure participation in ballroom dancing. In: S. Kono, A. Beniwal, P. Baweja & K. Spracklen, eds. Positive sociology of leisure: Contemporary perspectives. United Kingdom: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 159-173.
- I am currently working on a monograph Equality DanceSport: Gender and sexual identities matter planned for publication in 2024 with Routledge.

Additionally, I highly recommend the works of several colleagues who have presented very insightful and interesting perspectives on the mainstream ballroom dance scene in the United Kingdom and United States:

- Harman, V. (2019). The sexual politics of ballroom dancing. UK, London: Palgrave Macmillan.
- Marion, J. S. (2008). Ballroom: Culture and costume in competitive dance. Oxford, UK: Berg.
- Meneau V. (2020). Coding sexual violence as love–choreographed heteronormative gender performances in Latin American competitive dancing. Journal of Gender Studies, 29(8), 962-980.
- Owen, C., and Riley, S. (2020). A poststructuralist-informed inclusive masculinity theory (PS-IMT): developing IMT to account for complexities in masculinities, using learning to dance Latin and ballroom as an example, Journal of Gender Studies, 29:5, 533-546.
- Richardson, N. (2018). ‘Whether you are gay or straight, I don’t like to see effeminate dancing’: Effeminophobia in performance-level ballroom dance, Journal of Gender Studies, 27:2, 207-219.