Overview

DanceSport’s Economy of Desire examines how the DanceSport dispositive shapes its actors’ opportunities, desires, and choices to reproduce the heteronormative gender binary, focusing on the DanceSport dispositive, a network of power that spans over and influences objects (such as clothes or competition halls), discourses (such as federations’ competition regulations, syllabus books, judging criteria), and practices (dancing or choreographing). Meneau argues that the DanceSport dispositive constrains what Latin dance can look like, despite resistance and counter-movements, by excluding or invisibilising queerness and objectifying and sexualising female dancers. This shows in all elements that affect or constitute dancers’ performances on the (competition) dance floor; that includes registration, clothing, coupling, partnering, moving, judging. This book helps readers understand how the heteronormative gender binary works, how it plays out in all the elements that influence or make up dance, and how it manages to remain hegemonic. It demonstrates how the DanceSport dispositive affects and influences all its actors, all the time – how we think, decide, move, perceive others, or incorporate knowledge that shapes our bodies according to norms and productive power. Finally, by looking for the heteronormative gender binary in the dance and in the regulations, DanceSport’s Economy of Desire unravels the underlying mechanisms that secure the oppressive systems and allows society at large to better understand them.

Full Product Details

9781350531680

Table of Contents

Reviews

A bold call to action against heteronormativity in the world of Dancesport. This book is a must-read for advocators for inclusivity and anyone seeking deeper inspiration on how to become a change maker for a more just society. * Yen Nee Wong, University of Leeds, UK * Bold, rigorous, and deeply reflective, this book bridges theory and lived experience to analyze power structures but also resist them, offering a vision of what an inclusive DanceSport world might look like. Meneau’s work is a courageous critique of oppressive systems and a passionate invitation to resist, reimagine, and reconfigure cisheteronormative DanceSport. Methodologically innovative and scientifically courageous, this book closes one of the most significant gaps in dance research while opening up radical new avenues. * Andrea D. Buehrmann, University of Goettingen, Germany *

Author Information

Val Meneau (they/sie/elle) is a trans non-binary multi-disciplinary artist, researcher, activist, and lecturer in gender and queer studies. Their expertise lies in body and sexual politics at the intersection of gender, queer and critical dance studies.

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