Ballroom Blitz

Abstract

Every week, so we are led to believe, some five million people in Britain find themselves dancing (Johnson, 1993), or, at least, go to an event that includes dancing. The focus of this chapter is oriented towards one dance genre, ballroom dancing, through a discussion of certain issues that emerged from a qualitative study of particular dance events and activities that take place regularly in an established dedicated ballroom dance-hall (the Rivoli Ballroom) in south-east London.1 The concern here, in part, is to raise these issues through what may be termed as ‘snapshots’ of aspects of two of the dance activities, the competitions and the tea dances, and the voices of the people who were interviewed, as opposed to providing a systematic account of this research setting. The inquiry also generated certain ques­tions concerning research methods and strategies, which will contribute to recent discussions on the use of ethnographic methods for the analysis of dance contexts and practices (see, for example, Martin, 1995; Ness, 1996a, b; Novack, 1995; Thomas, 1996). However, it should be noted that this study represents the first stage of a larger project which will compare and contrast the events, and dance preferences of participants, in relation to age and gender differences, in an older-style venue such as the one under discussion here, with other more recently established ‘dance’ venues that have sprung up in pubs in south-east London. Thus, any conclusions that we might wish to draw from this initial study can only be tentative.