Gender and Sexuality Performances Among LGBT+ Equality Dancers: Photo-Elicitation as a Method of Inquiry

Abstract

In its classical form, ballroom dancing constitutes heterosexual dance couples enacting conservative forms of masculinity and femininity. A normative focus, both in scholarship and in practice, on the classical form in competitive ballroom dancing (also known as Dancesport) excludes the lived narratives of LGBT + dancers practicing the sport outside of the mainstream. Equality Dancesport is one such example, with dancers performing in diverse partnership typologies and adopting less gender-segregated dance roles and movements. Drawing on the photo-elicitation exercise, embedded within in-depth interviews, conducted as part of a broader ethnographic study on the equality Dancesport scene in the United Kingdom, I demonstrate how the strategy informed a ground-up emergence of a queer theoretical framework for understanding masculinities and femininities across the sex, gender and sexuality categorical divides. Four key opportunities afforded by photo elicitation are identified, namely (1) invoking new queer knowledge which blurs the binary divide in how concepts of masculinities and femininities are investigated in existing dance scholarship, (2) facilitating the development of more egalitarian researcher/participant relationships, (3) enabling affective, detailed and fluid narrations of lived experiences of dancing, and (4) positioning interviewees as dance spectators and inspiring reflections on the community. The paper concludes with three recommendations for negotiating the pitfalls of using a photo elicitation technique in dance studies. First, researchers need to recognise the limits of inclusivity offered by photo elicitation and practice sensitivity towards participants. Second, integrating photographs with other visual methods such as videos can enable researchers to leverage the strengths of different visual tools to inspire talk about broader topics. Third, before using the method, researchers need to develop mental strength for coping with negative talk, to achieve more holistic understanding of participants’ sentiments and motivations and as a duty of accountability towards them.

LGBT+ mainstreaming on strictly come dancing: Queering the norms of ballroom dancing

“…BBC's focus on editorial control is particularly evident in SCD's handling of the discourse on same-sex dance partnerships, with producers' decision to stick to its 16-year traditional format despite active calls for change from the public, judges and professional dancers on the show. SCD's format is tied to the traditional beginnings of ballroom dancing from centuries past which is deeply embedded within heteronormative assumptions of normative gender roles and heterosexuality (Wong, 2024;Wong, 2023;Wong et al, 2021). Producers' response that 'Strictly is a family show and we have chosen the traditional format of mixed-sex couples' (Mortimer, 2015) highlights the BBC's imagination of a traditional broadcast audience described by Ellis (1982: 114) as 'tak[ing] the form of families' consisting of 'two parents, the father working, the mother running the home, together with two children of school age'.…”