Ballroom Dancing and Transnationalism

I spent this past weekend down over in Blackpool at the 68^th Annual Inter-Varsity Dance Competition, the biggest ballroom dance competition St Andrews’ Ballroom and Latin Dance Society [BALLADS] attends every year. It is only now, sitting comfortably in bed, still exhausted from the trials of competition, that I find myself thinking about the transnationalism of ballroom dancing and dancesport.

For those unfamiliar with the term “dancesport,” it refers to competitive ballroom dancing, a sport in which couples perform for an audience and panel of judges in successive elimination rounds. The dances performed are more or less what you’d see on Strictly Come Dancing in the UK or Dancing with the Stars in the US, divided up into Standard (Waltz, Quickstep, Tango, Viennese Waltz, and Foxtrot) and Latin (Cha-Cha, Jive, Samba, Rumba, Paso Doble) categories.

Ballroom dancing, at its very core, is transnational, as the dances it encompasses take on influences from all over the world. The Tango, for instance, has its roots in Argentina, and was shaped by European influences into the form it is danced in competitively today. Quickstep developed out of various American styles of dancing, a physical interpretation of the music of the 1920s. The Viennese Waltz’s origins are disputed in spite of its name; it may very well have evolved in modern-day Germany or France. Of course, I’m only addressing Standard dances here; Latin dances (such as Cha-Cha) take on influences from all over the Afro-Caribbean world! These dances, with all of their diverse influences, are practiced and enjoyed around the globe.

Modern dancesport itself is an inherently transnational experience, as the sport’s top professionals and amateurs travel all around the world to compete. The world of dancesport is one that transcends borders. It is largely governed by the World DanceSport Federation [WSDF], headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland. Its most important competition by far is the Blackpool Dance Festival, hosted in its namesake city in England.

A mere glance at the WSDF’s website’s home page reveals dancesport’s transnational nature. Currently, it advertises competitions in Lisbon, Portugal, Brno, Czechia, and Fort Lauderdale, United States. Results for events held in Voesendorf, Austria, Prato, Italy, and Krasnogorsk, Russia are now posted. A video is included documenting the top Standard couples at the WSDF’s Grand Slam competition in Shanghai.  

In this day and age, competitive ballroom dancers live transnational lives by necessity, given the importance of attending events hosted across the world. One of my favorite professional couples is made up of dancers Winson Tam and Anastasia Novikova. The former is of Chinese-Canadian descent, and the latter’s family is from Belarus. They vlog of their travels and international exploits on a rather wholesome YouTube channel I follow from time to time. Its contents very much reflect ballroom dancing’s transnationality; through watching their videos you can follow Winson and Anastasia’s ballroom journey from Chengdu to Tokyo, from Bucharest to Moscow.

Interestingly enough, given St Andrews’ transnational makeup, our very own BALLADS competition team is highly diverse, characterized by its members’ diverse origins. The nationalities of the team we brought to Blackpool this weekend were as follows: English, Scottish, American, German, Austrian, Slovenian, Cypriot, Czech, Indian. I do not mean to simplify my lovely teammates down to nationalities, but seek to highlight how such a team makeup really shows that we live today in a highly interconnected world.

A common theme expressed in our seminars is the idea that transnational history is practiced as a means of making sense of our contemporary, globalized world. I can’t even conceive of how histories of the future may write about our time, a global era in which a subject as specialized as ballroom dancing encompasses so many transnational connections.