{"id":1666,"date":"2020-02-24T00:38:35","date_gmt":"2020-02-24T00:38:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/?p=1666"},"modified":"2020-03-02T14:23:50","modified_gmt":"2020-03-02T14:23:50","slug":"ballroom-dancing-and-transnationalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/2020\/02\/24\/ballroom-dancing-and-transnationalism\/","title":{"rendered":"Ballroom Dancing and Transnationalism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I spent this past weekend\ndown over in Blackpool at the 68th<\/sup> Annual Inter-Varsity Dance\nCompetition, the biggest ballroom dance competition St Andrews\u2019 Ballroom and\nLatin Dance Society [BALLADS] attends every year. It is only now, sitting comfortably\nin bed, still exhausted from the trials of competition, that I find myself\nthinking about the transnationalism of ballroom dancing and dancesport. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For those unfamiliar with\nthe term \u201cdancesport,\u201d it refers to competitive ballroom dancing, a sport in\nwhich couples perform for an audience and panel of judges in successive\nelimination rounds. The dances performed are more or less what you\u2019d see on Strictly\nCome Dancing <\/em>in the UK or Dancing with the Stars<\/em> in the US, divided\nup into Standard (Waltz, Quickstep, Tango, Viennese Waltz, and Foxtrot) and Latin\n(Cha-Cha, Jive, Samba, Rumba, Paso Doble) categories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ballroom dancing, at its very core, is transnational, as the dances it encompasses take on influences from all over the world. The Tango,<\/a> for instance, has its roots in Argentina, and was shaped by European influences into the form it is danced in competitively today. Quickstep<\/a> developed out of various American styles of dancing, a physical interpretation of the music of the 1920s. The Viennese Waltz\u2019s<\/a> origins are disputed in spite of its name; it may very well have evolved in modern-day Germany or France. Of course, I\u2019m only addressing Standard dances here; Latin dances (such as Cha-Cha<\/a>) 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Modern dancesport itself\nis an inherently transnational experience, as the sport\u2019s top professionals and\namateurs travel all around the world to compete. The world of dancesport is one\nthat transcends borders. It is largely governed by the World DanceSport\nFederation [WSDF], headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland. Its most important\ncompetition by far is the Blackpool Dance Festival, hosted in its namesake city\nin England. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A mere glance at the WSDF\u2019s website\u2019s home page<\/a> reveals dancesport\u2019s 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<\/a> is included documenting the top Standard couples at the WSDF\u2019s Grand Slam competition in Shanghai.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/a> The former is of Chinese-Canadian descent, and the latter\u2019s family is from Belarus. They vlog of their travels and international exploits on a rather wholesome YouTube channel<\/a> I follow from time to time. Its contents very much reflect ballroom dancing\u2019s transnationality; through watching their videos you can follow Winson and Anastasia\u2019s ballroom journey from Chengdu to Tokyo, from Bucharest to Moscow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Winson
Winson and Anastasia competing at the 2019 WSDF Championship in Prague, Czechia.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Interestingly enough, given St Andrews\u2019 transnational makeup, our very own BALLADS competition team is highly diverse, characterized by its members\u2019 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A common theme expressed\nin our seminars is the idea that transnational history is practiced as a means\nof making sense of our contemporary, globalized world. I can\u2019t even conceive of\nhow histories of the future may write about our time, a global era in which a subject\nas specialized as ballroom dancing encompasses so many transnational\nconnections.   <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I spent this past weekend down over in Blackpool at the 68th Annual Inter-Varsity Dance Competition, the biggest ballroom dance competition St Andrews\u2019 Ballroom and Latin Dance Society [BALLADS] attends every year. It is only now, sitting comfortably in bed,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5wNtZ-qS","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1666"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1666\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1703,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1666\/revisions\/1703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}