Fourteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

The teaching of Afro-Latin partner dance forms including Salsa, Bachata, Cha Cha Cha and Kizomba, routinely encourages participants to perform their gender within a rigid paradigm of heteronormative power-relations. Although many dancers are challenging the conventions of male-leading and female-following, through initiatives such as queer-tango and same-sex ballroom dance, there is virtually no evidence of social-dance role-reversal within mixed-sex couples ie. women leading men. This is a case study of a Role-Swap Kizomba course run in the city of Leeds in the UK, which aimed to challenge the twin taboos of men-following-women and women-leading-men in Afro-Latin social dance. To discover whether social dancers were open to dance-role reversal within a heterosexualised context. The course was constructed as both, a socially-engaged artwork and a social experiment. This study draws data from: questionnaires completed by dancers who attended the classes; ethnographic observation of the process and its outcomes; interviews with members of the larger Kizomba dancing community. The most significant results were the relative ease with which participants adapted to the new roles and the feelings of pleasure that many, particularly the men, reported from the experience. The paper also reports on follow-up experimentation with new approaches to shared leading which developed from the initial course.