‘I go to dance, right?’: representation/sensation on the gendered dance floor

Abstract

This article explores a group of young adults’ experiences of social dancing in the Eastside of Vancouver, BC, Canada. Drawing from critical and feminist qualitative methodological approaches as well as dance studies, the ethnography research privileges participants’ embodied knowledge of dancing in particular nightlife settings--small alternative spaces, rather than the city’s more mainstream, big business dance clubs. Dance’s double-bind, as both embodied and representational practice is evidenced through participants’ expressed negotiations of sexuality on the dance floor. Women participants, in particular, stress that though there may be an (implied) audience that constitutes their performance, gender performances in their nightlife leisure spaces are not synonymous with a desire for heterosexual relationships.