Abstract

This colloquium includes four papers examining youth dancers as athletes in community and university contexts. The first paper investigates relationships between dance participation, autonomy-supportive teaching, and dancer self-esteem among 425 competitive female youth dancers. Results indicate low and moderate levels of autonomy support from dance teachers predicted dancers experiencing lower levels of self-esteem as training hours increase. High levels of autonomy support showed no significant relationship between training hours and dancer self-esteem, indicating autonomy-supportive teaching may be a protective factor for dancers. The second paper compares training experiences among 425 dancers pre-covid and 232 dancers during covid. Important insights around training, dance engagement, and connections between dancers, teammates, and teachers will be discussed. The third paper focuses on similarities and differences amongst the experiences of competitive youth dancers across several styles. These adolescent community-based competitive dancers complete in styles such as jazz, lyrical, hip hop, Highland, and Irish. Across these styles, dancers have both related and varying studio experiences, levels of parental involvement, experiences at competitions, and attitudes around dance. The fourth paper examines competitive dancers’ experiences in and outside of sport contexts in various universities. As competitive dance has varying levels of athletic status across universities, dancers’ categorization and forms of representation are complicated as they occupy spaces as both artists and athletes. The symposium chair will lead a discussion on the implications from these studies around youth dancers’ engagement in dance in various contexts, training insights, impacts on mental health and wellbeing, as well as dancer identity.

Presenters

Dawn Zinga
Associate Dean and Professor, Faculty of Social Sciences, Child and Youth Studies, Brock University, Ontario, Canada

Victoria Dewar
Student, Master of Arts - Applied Health Sciences, Brock University, Ontario, Canada

Melissa Blackburn
Student, Master of Arts, Brock University, Ontario, Canada

Natalie Tacuri
Student, PhD in Educational Studies, McGill University, Quebec, Canada

Details

Presentation Type

Colloquium

Theme

Sports Education

KEYWORDS

Competitive Dance, Community Based Youth Sports, College Sports, Student Athletes

Digital Media

Videos