30.09.23 — 10:30
CN D Pantin
10:30 – 35 min.
Dance schools as competitions: a (s)elective process?
by Carole Christe
When embarking on the pursuit of a dance career, one feels a strong sense of having a calling for the profession.
To enter any conservatory, one has to take an entrance exam; but once one is in, is the competition really over? In this paper based on ethnographic studies conducted in a francophone Swiss professional contemporary dance school, I want to show how dance training is competitive and intrinsically (s)elective. Although it doesn’t feature in the curriculum, students learn modes of being there, which proves to be a strong socializing element. This mode of being shapes the daily life of pre-professional dancers and it carries paradoxical injunctions in relation to the world of sports – in the way dancers manage their bodies, but also in the way the effects of constant competition are constantly displaced. For this paper, I’ll rely on a documentary film featuring interviews conducted with a student of that school.
11:05 – 35 min.
“School of life”. Incorporating competition in hip-hop dance graduate curricula: the case of young upper-middle class women
by Marco Mary
How is competition incorporated? How does a training program in hip-hop dance teach students a culture that promotes competing and winning? How does the institution contribute to transforming dancers into “competing champions” ready to win international battles and get selected after tough auditions? Through a sociological and ethnological study led in a hip-hop school, this paper studies how the institution shapes students to become competitors. The various competitions (battles, end-of-the-year exams, auditions, dance competitions) structure dancers’ daily lives. Analyzing the school context and the institutional framework highlights the way in which the training programs teach young middle-to-upper-class women to earn their place in this logic of performance.