UC Riverside UC Riverside Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Find Your Places, Please: Gender in 21st Century U.S. Amateur Ballroom Dance Practices Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/229605hj Author Machin, Denise Publication Date 2018 License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ 4.0 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE Find Your Places, Please: Gender in 21st Century U.S. Amateur Ballroom Dance Practices A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Critical Dance Studies by Denise M. Machin June 2018 Dissertation Committee: Dr. Anthea Kraut, Chairperson Dr. Imani Kai Johnson Dr. Patrick Mason Dr. Jane Ward Copyright by Denise Machin 2018 The Dissertation of Denise Machin is approved: ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ Committee Chairperson University of California, Riverside Acknowledgments: I would like to thank all of the people who helped me complete this research. First, my dissertation committee chair, Dr. Anthea Kraut, who would always make time for me and inspires me to be a better teacher and researcher. Second, my cohort members; Casey Avaunt, Christine Sahin, and Wei-Chi Wu. I could not ask for more supportive classmates and colleagues who have helped develop my research over time. I am also grateful to have had the pleasure of working with my wonderful committee members, Dr. Imani Kai Johnson, Dr. Patrick Mason, Dr. Jane Ward, and professor Joel Smith who served on my qualifying exams. I always felt supported by the faculty at UCR, including Dr. Jacqueline Shea Murphy, Dr. Linda Tomko, and professor taisha paggett. I am also grateful for the professors I had a Columbia University who prepared me for graduate school, including Dr. Lynn Garafola and Dr. Paul Scolieri. I am indebted to the University of California, Riverside. Through the Graduate Research Mentoring Program grant, the Gluck Fellows Program, Chancellor Distinguished Fellowship, and teaching assistantships I was granted the privilege of getting to focus on my research. This research was also made possible by a Charles Redd Center for Western Studies grant provided by BYU. This grant provided funding as well as access to the L. Tom Perry Special Collections, including the personal writings of Alma Heaton. I would like to thank the competition organizers who welcomed me into their communities, including Kalin Mitov and Eddie Alba. I would like to thank the Dance Departments of Brigham Young University and Utah Valley University, especially iv professor Curt Holman and professor Chris Witt. This research would not have been possible without the generosity of various dancers from across the country who shared their experiences with me, especially Roxx Anna who got me out on the dancefloor. I am also grateful for my dance partners during graduate school, Nick Hruskocy and Jason Ju. I am appreciative of my students at UCR and the Claremont Colleges. My interactions with them helped ground my work in dance. What started as an ethnographic study for a class at the Claremont Colleges Ballroom Dance Company turned into a job as director that I cherish. I am also grateful for the support I received from my colleagues at Pomona college and the Smith Campus Center. I also need to thank the various servers at Coco’s Bakery Restaurant on University Ave, the front desk staff at the Courtyard by Marriott in Riverside, and the servers at various Applebee's for tolerating my four hour homework sessions and always making sure I had enough coffee. I am grateful for the Graduate Writing Center at UCR and the Center for Writing and Rhetoric at Claremont Graduate University for helping me become a better writer and for providing my with a supportive environment to write in. And last, but not least, I am eternally grateful for my family. I am so proud to be a member of Team Machin, and am grateful to my parents Tom and Molly and my older sister Diane, who let me talk through ideas with them for years! v To my family. vi ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Find Your Places, Please Gender in 21st Century U.S. Amateur Ballroom Dance Practices by Denise M. Machin Doctor of Philosophy, Graduate Program in Critical Dance Studies University of California, Riverside, June 2018 Dr. Anthea Kraut, Chairperson This dissertation explores contemporary amateur ballroom dance practices in the U.S., paying special attention to the uses of gender. I focus on amateur ballroom dancers associated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and queer communities to see the different ways gender in employed through ballroom dance. I argue that these communities both re-inscribed and challenge gender through different interpretations of ballroom dance. In chapter one, I situate the debate over how to define a couple on the dancefloor within the larger political landscape around the issue of marriage equality. This chapter also provides background information on gender studies and Mormon studies to argue that Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) and LGBTQIA ballroom dancers are using the performance of ballroom dance to promote their respective conceptions of partnerships and gender performance not only in dance, but also in general. Chapter two provides an in depth look into the history of dance in the LDS community before turning to ethnographic research on ballroom dance practices at Brigham Young University and Utah Valley University, arguing that the division of vii religious roles by gender in Mormonism is echoed in LDS practices of ballroom dance. Chapter three explains the specific aesthetic choices in partnering, costuming, and dance technique that are utilized by same-gender ballroom dancers to (re)define gender before teasing out the different visions for same-gender ballroom dance in the U.S. This chapter argues that despite the active attempts at inclusivity in this community, binary language and a fear of femininity still results in exclusionary practices. The fourth and final chapter examines the position of ballroom dance within the field of dance studies, arguing that histories of appropriation and assumptions about gender practices in ballroom dance contribute to its middlebrow status in dance studies. This middlebrow status is explored though ethnographic research at Pomona College, a school where the ballroom dance program is quite popular yet marginalized with relationship to Dance by being located in the Physical Education Department. Overall, this dissertation adds to the existing body of research on ballroom dance, problematizing the stereotype that ballroom is only heteronormative, through showing the ways ballroom dancers both uphold and challenged gender roles. viii Table of Contents Acknowledgments..............................................................................................................iv Dedication...........................................................................................................................vi Abstract .............................................................................................................................vii A Preface on Positionality................................................................................................xiii Chapter One: Prop 8- A Gender Debate........................................................................1 Social Dance to Dancesport: A Brief History of U.S. Partner Dance................4 The Politicization of American Ballroom Dance.............................................13 Queer Studies and the Ephemeralness of Gender ...........................................14 Mormons and Marriage: Polygamy and the Necessity of Distinct Gender Roles................................................................................................................21 Prop 8 and the Battle to Define Couples .........................................................27 Moving Forward .............................................................................................34 Works Cited.....................................................................................................36 Chapter Two: Gender Inscription in Motion...............................................................39 The Gender Binary in the LDS Church: The Priesthood/Motherhood Divide...............................................................................................................42 The Family: A Proclamation to the World .....................................................48 A Tradition of Dance in the LDS Church .......................................................54 Natural Opposites: Ballroom Dancing at BYU...............................................61 A History of Social Ballroom Dance at BYU..........................62 ix A Shift from Social to Performance: BYU on the Competition Floor.........................................................................................65 Amateur American Titles: BYU’s National Influence............75 Costuming, Casting, and the Gendered Mormon Body...........77 The Gesticulation of Masculinity.............................................81 The Rose or the Bull: Obedience and Resistance in Motion...83 Tacit Religiosity: