Partnership between Chinese Dance Sport Couples: A Consensual Qualitative Research Analysis

Abstract

The aim of our study was to explore the conceptions related to partnership between dance sport couples. We conducted in-depth interviews with 20 registered athletes of the Chinese Dance Sports Federation (CDSF) about partnership between dance couples, using the Consensual Qualitative Research (CQR) method. Results revealed that partnership tended to stem from seven domains: (1) mutual understanding, (2) instant intimacy, (3) long-term affection, (4) obligational ties, (5) instrumental ties, (6) tacit factors, and (7) mutual self-disclosure. Each domain included several categories of core ideas, most of which were general and typical across the respondents. The general and most typical core ideas were related to mutual understanding in all aspects (17T), pleasure (18T), sense of substitution (15T), intimacy (20G), harmony (20G), mutual help (20G), mutual tolerance (20G), mutual attraction (15T), responsibility (20G), training plan (12T), consistent goals (20G), skills improvement (20G), image matching (16T), mutual self-disclosure (18T), which suggested a general belief in the equity perspective regarding partnership between Chinese dance sport couples. Future studies need to examine diverse samples of athlete–athlete dyads to advance interpersonal theory in sports and add to emerging theories of performance behavior and expertise in sport.

Development and initial validation of the Partnership Scale-DanceSport Couples

“…Obligatory instrumental ties (OIT) refer to the reciprocal behavior tendency of elite dancer couples based on the principle of obligation ruled by "renqing" to maintain their partnership during the whole process of taking DanceSport competition as the goal. It includes the obligation and instrument factors (Liu et al, 2022). First, because the importance of effective talent development in sports is well established as a key aspect of achieving high-level performance (Taylor et al, 2022), the competitive victory in DanceSport is taken as the starting point (Bednarzowa and Młodzikowska, 1983;Budnik-Przybylska et al, 2015).…”

“…In addition, according to Chen et al (2013), the analysis of the characteristics of Chinese "guanxi (interpersonal relationship) will always be considered as a capital, " as it can be found that the DanceSport partnership is a tool to achieve goals. Therefore, partners often exhibit a high degree of reciprocity and interaction (Reisman, 1981;Marion, 2006), and partnership is always taken as an instrument to obtain benefits (Lai, 2014;Liu et al, 2022).…”

“…When describing the qualities of the ideal dance partnership, an elite dancer suggested that a partner who can help them improve their dancing skills and obtain excellent competitive performance is perfect (Marion, 2006). Second, however, in Asia like China, there is a strong emphasis on obligation between DanceSport couples (Liu et al, 2022). The obligation is ruled by "renqing (favor) or mianzi (face)" based on Confucianism, which is based on personal feelings rather than commercial law to safeguard obligations.…”

“…According to Poczwardowski et al (2019), the most important work of researchers is to build a complete and ambitious system out of a large theoretical wasteland, focus on the screening and dimensional constructions of two-person interpersonal (Poczwardowski et al, 2019). As the DanceSport partnership research is in its primary stage of theoretical research, literature on the partnership between DanceSport couples is sparse (Majoross et al, 2008;Liu et al, 2022). Therefore, the purpose of our study was to develop a scale to measure the partnership between DanceSport couples-Partnership Scale-DanceSport Couples (PS-DSC).…”

“…In addition, once a partnership is established, due to the need for competition and training, the dancers face a longer period of interaction with their partners and their lives. Training and competition are highly intertwined (Reynolds, 1998) that a relationship of overlapping instrumental ties and expressive ties will be formed between partners (Wang, 2018), the boundary between the instrumental ties (business-like partnerships) and expressive ties becomes more blurred, and it is easy to break the partnership because of love issues (Liu et al, 2022). Therefore, for the dancers, besides the great amount of practice (diligence and endurance) and a high level of technical expertise (for which a good trainer is important), their partners are vital, and good cooperation between partners is of decisive importance for effective competition (Peters, 1992;Majoross et al, 2008;Budnik-Przybylska et al, 2015).…”