Introduction

The introduction outlines the myriad ways in which competition impacts dance, and how dance moves through and in response to this framework of aspiration, judgment, and worth. It considers the implicit competition on the concert stage as dancers compete to secure positions in prestigious companies and choreographers hustle to attract audiences and secure funding; the one-upmanship that emerges through the informal contests of social dance practice; the ubiquity of dance competition scenarios on the popular screen; as well as formal dance competitions with judges, prizes, winners, and losers. The introduction notes how dance is embedded within a neoliberal economy that favors individual success and free-market competition; yet it also argues that models of competition exist that are community-oriented, and that dancing bodies can employ tactics of resistance or critique through moving in ways that reveal and undermine the power structures of competition.

Rapper Dance Adjudication

This chapter examines the perspective of sword dance judges at the Dancing England Rapper Tournament. Using a form of video-assisted interview, strategies and patterns of adjudication and aesthetic evaluation are revealed as constituting different fundamental understandings of dance, shared by groups of judges and related to cultural and dance backgrounds. The content and timing of judges’ comments about rapper dances are charted, creating “temporal-aesthetic maps” that are used to reveal underlying cultural conceptions of the performance by comparing “aesthetically dense” moments with unmarked periods of time. This methodology allows the act of adjudication to be divided into four separate processes: expectation-setting, perception, interpretation, and decision-making, by which judges transform an ephemeral, aesthetic experience into scores for competitors.

Above and Beyond the Battle

This chapter explores competitive street dance crew choreography in relation to interdisciplinary theoretical frameworks regarding virtuosity and excess. Through a close analysis of five performances featured on the British television talent shows of Britain’s Got Talent and Got to Dance, this chapter examines the concept of virtuosity as transcendence in relation to the continued emphasis on technology and the street dance body. Through the choreographic application of animation techniques, synchronicity, the construction of “meta-bodies,” and the narrative of ordinary versus extraordinary, this chapter reveals that crews create the illusion of transgression through their affinity with technology, while also competing with their cinematic counterparts. Through this analysis, this chapter further reveals the negotiation between the individualistic nature of the virtuoso and the crew collective within the neoliberal capitalist framework of the competition.

Miss Exotic World

Neo-burlesque has been praised by dance scholarship as a body positive, feminist, safe space that has celebrated difference and argued for a broader spectrum of beauty, gender representation, and orientation. Since the inception of the movement, performers have made the pilgrimage to the Burlesque Hall of Fame pageant, and now claim titles such as Best Troupe, the King of Boylesque, and Miss Exotic World. Utilizing an ethnographic methodology, by way of participant observation and interview data, this chapter examines the author’s experience of serving as a judge at this pageant. It analyzes performers’ efforts to “authentically” recreate this mid-twentieth-century form of exotic dance and argues that such attempts can perpetuate historic prejudices with regard to body size, sexual orientation, and race. Additionally, it suggests that the process of competition often normalizes and regulates this inclusive performance practice, and is fundamentally at odds with the supposed philosophies of the neo-burlesque community.

Shifting Dynamics

This chapter examines the shifting dynamics of practice and transmission in sean nós dancing, an Irish solo, percussive, and semi-improvisatory dance form. This dance form extended its contexts of practice in the 1970s from rural, informal, and intimate gatherings in Conamara in the west of Ireland, to a national staged competitive event, the Oireachtas, considered to be the primary national competition for sean nós dancers. The chapter argues that competition culture influenced the transmission and practice of the dance form and the ethno-aesthetic embodied in its practice. With live television broadcasts of the competition from the first decade of the 2000s, an increased interest in sean nós dancing in Ireland and further afield followed, and concerns around issues of performance, identity, place, and authenticity arose.

Man and Money Ready

That dancing was part of antebellum America’s rough-and-tumble world of sport is little known today, but scores of men and women made their names and livings by challenging each other to jig, hornpipe, and even ballet competitions. Jig dancers earned continental reputations as artists and athletes by matching up in scored bouts for hefty purses, silver belts, and side bets. Champion dancers gained large followings as they met in local taverns or toured circus and theater circuits. This chapter argues that challenge dancing thrived in the 1840s and 1850s because it tapped into trends and traditions popular among whites and blacks of both sexes. Challenge dancers engaged in trials of skill, combined Irish and African steps, emulated boxers, wore blackface, copied danseuses, and exploited the popular press. In the process, they transformed a local entertainment into a marketable, media-driven profession with national, and even transnational, appeal.

Freedom to Compete

Gaga, the movement language developed by Israeli choreographer Ohad Naharin, is advertised as “an experience of freedom and pleasure” in which students are encouraged to move at their own pace and not compare themselves to others, yet there are several aspects of the intensives that fall in line with contemporary neoliberal ideals of individualism and competition, such as the rehearsal of choreography and the presence of the creator of Gaga. This chapter explores the contradictions at Gaga dance intensives between the practice’s philosophical imperative to focus on the self and pleasure, and the desire of many dancers to impress the teachers and gain professional contacts or jobs. The chapter argues that the idyllic philosophies of Gaga are unable to neatly exist in the competitive socioeconomic climate of the contemporary concert dance world, urging a rethinking of how dancers participate in both corporeal and corporate economies.

Not Another Don Quixote!

This chapter discusses international ballet competitions through exploring their contributions to ballet as a transnational practice. It provides an ethnographic account, specifically focused on the multilayered significance of competing for aspiring dancers in the People’s Republic of China, in addition to assessing the role of competitions in the broader institution of ballet in China. The chapter investigates the value found in engaging with ballet competitions in terms of physical, social, economic, and political capital. It explores how value operates differently for individual competitors, dance teachers, training institutions, and even nations, both within China and in the rest of the world, to indicate the significance of competitions as a contributing factor to China’s increasing status in ballet more widely.

Reclaiming Competitive Tango

This chapter explores Argentina’s Campeonato Mundial de Baile de Tango (World Tango Dance Championships) in the context of tango’s history in the English-designed ballroom dance competitions that have defined tango’s international image since the “tango-mania” of the early twentieth century. Use of the Mundial by the Argentine government to advance commercial and national branding agendas is examined in conjunction with the Mundial’s use by dancers to launch careers and expand acceptance of same-sex dancing. It is argued that Argentines are redefining tango competition on their own terms in ways that both reclaim the dance from foreigners and simultaneously reproduce some of the same aesthetic shifts that were effected through tango’s inclusion in ballroom dance competitions, resulting in a whiter, more homogenous, and externally focused expression.

Making Play Work

This chapter examines the divergent functions of the live martial arts practice of sparring, as combative activity, as competition, as play, and as intersubjective exchange. In this process, the chapter examines the multiple connotations of competition within the overlapping spheres of game and sport. Central to this inquiry are the differences between competitive pleasure and competitive spectacle. In line with sports sociologists and historians, this chapter maintains that sport emphasizes competitive spectacle and hinges on outcome—winning or losing—rather than highlighting the pleasure of competition, suggesting that attention to physical, contestatory, and exploratory interactions between people may offset a societal overemphasis on winning. An intentional reclaiming of amateurism, with its attention to experimentation, can also play a role, as can a reconsideration of the significance of failure.