Embodying Precarity,Pain and Perfection: Young Dancers’ Commitment to the Ballet Body as Aesthetic Project
- Submitting institution
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Canterbury Christ Church University
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- U33.025
- Type
- C - Chapter in book
- DOI
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- Book title
- Dance, Professional Practice, and the Workplace: Challenges and Opportunities for Dance Professionals, Students, and Educators
- Publisher
- Routledge
- ISBN
- 978-0-367-82207-1
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of publication
- -
- Year of publication
- 2020
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
-
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- Research group(s)
-
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This chapter focuses on ballet as work and how power and perfectionism in body and mind, manifest within the social world of ballet. It examines the embodied practices of adolescent dancers and their aspirations with foci on precarity and perfection as body, labour and politics. It brings together ballet, sociology and psychology and explores young dancers’ commitment and motivation to the social construction of the body as aesthetic project on a ‘promise’ of a performing career. Pierre Bourdieu’s conceptual schema of field, habitus and capital is used as a way of making greater sense of the ballet work ethic. 10 young dancers, 5 girls and 5 boys, were interviewed in the context of their non-residential, elite ballet school. The findings reveal the power of the ballet work ethic for reward, personal capital and success. Original data reveals that discipline, peer pressure, comparatives and competitiveness can be viewed as ‘socially prescribed perfectionism’. Amongst the precarity and risk, it is suggested that the young dancers appeared to acknowledge their dependency to the social world of ballet and the power of institutional, peer group and bodily contexts. This chapter builds on the work featured in the book Ballet Body Narratives. The chapter features a new group of adolescents and was undertaken in a different ballet school to that featured in the Ballet Body Narratives book. The chapter offers distinct insights into the complexities of labour, politics and precarity that surround the ballet work ethic and peer comparatives and competitiveness in the ballet environments. The chapter discusses these power dynamics and introduces the term ‘socially prescribed perfectionism’.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -
