Abstract
While there is a growing body of research on the social aspects of older people's dance, studies focusing on emotions are rare. In this study, we use an interactionist sociological perspective to examine the role of emotions in older social dancers' experiences in Sweden. Through qualitative interviews with 29 active or previously active dancers, we found that their experiences of emotional energy and experiences of flow override concerns of age and aging. Age, however, did become significant as the age differences at dance events could bring forth feelings of alienation associated with feeling old. In addition, cultural and gendered norms of appropriate age differences between dancing partners produced shame and pride as well as feelings of being either old or young. Moreover, certain bodily experiences were interpreted in terms of age. Overall, the study contributes to the discussions of the complexity of subjective experiences of age by highlighting its emotional aspects through social partner dancing.
Highlights
A body of research concerning subjective age and age identity testifies to a great variety of uses of age categories to express self-identity and sense of belonging to various groups (e.g., Kastenbaum et al, 1972; Nikander, 2000, 2009; Kaufman and Elder, 2002; Diehl et al, 2014; Pinquart and Wahl, 2021)
We apply the concept of emotionally perceived age as we focus on feelings related to subjective experiences of age
We lean on the interactionist sociological understanding of emotions which conceives of emotions in terms of social phenomena arising in the context of social interactions and relations (Hochschild, 1983; Collins, 2004)
Summary
“You get a special feeling in your body when dancing”, a woman, aged 65, said to explain why dancing makes her feel young. Research on the social aspects of older people’s dancing demonstrates that dancing may generate a broad range of positive emotions, such as a sense of belonging, intimacy, self-esteem, pride and joy as well as negative emotions, such as frustration when turned down and grief when the body fails (Cooper and Thomas, 2002; Nadasen, 2008; Paulson, 2009; Stevens-Ratchford, 2016; Schneider and McCoy, 2018; Alfredsson-Olsson and Heikkinen, 2019) Several of these studies touch on emotions in connection with respondents’ accounts of the meaning of dance to them (Cooper and Thomas, 2002; Stevens-Ratchford, 2016; Araujo and Rocha, 2019) and some articles refer to emotions within a serious leisure perspective (Stevens-Ratchford, 2016; Schneider and McCoy, 2018). This study aims to deepen this initial finding by focusing on emotions and age and by adding interactionist theories on age to the interactionist sociology of emotion approach
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