Twelfth International Conference on Sport & Society

Abstract

Sport is not just a physical or a leisure activity. It’s scarved in participants’ ways of lives, in their paths. Some sportive practices can be significant on many levels: individual, identitary, social, political… It is notably the case of the practice of pole dancing. This bold practice recently referred to as a sport plays with the established, definitive, immutable. In a postcolonial world where identities are questioned, pole dancing evolves on the borders between gymnastic disciplines and movement’s sensuality. Pole dance is often designated as inscribing once again women in a form of “raunch culture” and fixing a stereotypical femininity. However, these approaches remain blind to pole dancing’s evolutions. Since its release from bars in the 90’s in North America, this sporting activity spreads throughout the world, unequally geographically and socially, and constantly questions our societies by mirroring the major concerns that agitates it: the place of the naked body in the public space, the reconfiguration of gender identities, the persistence of social and racial inequalities. By exploring a comparative ethnographic approach to the practice of pole dancing in France and Senegal, we aim to understand the way in which pole dance engages the body, in order to question dominant systems of thought and the pseudo-fixity of identities. By narrating short personal stories through visual media (3 to 5 minutes long, 3 or 4 movies), our optic is to help understand the social questions that are visually raised and gathered in the “more than sportive” practice of pole dancing.