![]()
Introduction
Doug Risner, Ph.D.
Keep in mind always the present you are constructing. It should be the future you want.
Alice Walker1
Sexuality is a difficult topic for all educators. Dance teachers and educators are not immune to these educational challenges, especially given the large number of children, adolescents, and young adults who pursue dance study and performance. Most troubling is the lack of serious discourse in dance education and the development of educative strategies to promote healthy sexuality and empowered gender identities in proactive ways. This volume, focused on sexuality, gender, and identity in dance education, expands this developing area of study and investigates diverse perspectives from public schools, private sector dance studios and schools, as well as college and university dance programs. By openly bringing issues of sexuality and gender to the forefront of dance education and training, this book straightforwardly addresses critical challenges for engaged educators interested in age appropriate content, theme and costume, the hyper-sexualization of children and adolescents, sexual orientation and homophobia, the hidden curriculum of sexuality and gender, sexual identity, the impact of contemporary culture and mass media, and sexual exploitation. Original research articles provide frank discussion, highlight practical applications and offer insights and recommendations for today’s educational environment in dance.
This collection, derived from a two-part special issue of the Journal of Dance Education (JODE) published in 2004 and 2005, is devoted to an informed discussion of sexuality, gender, and identity from multiple perspectives of dance education including public schools (K-12), private studios, conservatories, and higher education. The primary concern was to give this special issue a shape that responds not only to the sociological and pedagogical impact of sexuality and gender on the educational experience and perspective of dance students and teachers, but also to attend to the scope of dance education that the profession encompasses. Nine articles from the special issue are presented in this current volume accompanied by five additional articles published in JODE from 2002 to 2013. In sum, the content of this collection has garnered over 100 citations (Google Scholar) and readers are encouraged to view this retrospective engagement with previously published papers as a foundation for future research and inquiry. Though the enormity of the subject matter as well as its diverse context-related implications makes constructing a comprehensive issue especially challenging, the significance of openly bringing these concerns to the forefront of dance education remains crucially important. This introductory chapter provides background context and pedagogical approaches and then presents the contributions.
Among innumerable potential topics emanating from this review of sexuality and gender in dance education in the twenty-first century, this book focuses straightforwardly on today’s challenges for dance educators. Critically examining age appropriate dance, the hidden curriculum of gender and sexuality, the hyper-sexualization of children and adolescents, sexual harassment and abuse, sexual orientation, homophobia, HIV/AIDS, the impact of sexuality in contemporary culture and mass media, and finally, definitions of healthy sexuality, the contributors highlight practical applications and provide insights and recommendations for today’s educational environment. As Alice Walker reminds us, it is in the “today” we have the opportunity to create what becomes the “tomorrow” in which we have the obligation to live and teach.
Sexuality in Dance Education
As a global culture we have an intense sense of justice and solidarity, one that shows both collective support and respect for human life and the impulse for “the good.” While at the same time, the impulse for hate, opportunism, division, self-preservation, and blame often flourishes in reciprocal fashion. It is within this profound confusion that we can begin to imagine things otherwise. Because it is clear that as a society we are highly adept at simultaneously holding two highly contradictory narratives in our collective heads and hearts. For example, the recent child abuse crises in the Catholic Church reminds us of our culture’s ability to discount vitally important issues of human dignity and rights, especially concerning children, even when our intuition and deepest beliefs tell us that something must be done. What follows is a brief overview of the limited, yet growing literature that informs this collection.
In private sector dance education, issues of age appropriateness and sexual explicitness in dance have surfaced as important concerns for dance educators. Horosko (1998) warns of the psychological ramifications of encouraging preteens to perform dance styles unsuited to their age level, and the ways in which children’s dignity and true capacity are sacrificed as a consequence. Gold (2002) and Gold and Cuming (1999) note apprehensions and varying points of view regarding age appropriateness but challenge dance teachers in the private sector to carefully reconsider the “epidemic” use of adult themes in music, movement, and costume for young dancers. Project Motivate directors Gold and Cuming offer guidelines to schools of dance in annual workshops presented across the US.
Research on sexual orientation and homophobia in dance education began to emerge in the late 1990s as important areas for further inquiry (Crawford 1994; Bailey and Oberschneider 1997; Risner 2002a; Mozingo and Risner 2002). Scholarship in dance education and homosexuality is varied and diverse, encompassing research on gay males and male participation (Gard 2001, 2003; Risner 2002b, 2002c, 2007), as well as lesbianism (Briginshaw 1998, 1999; Mozingo 2005) and shifting sexualities (Desmond 2001). Two additional titles of note that include emotional and psychological issues in dance pedagogy are Hamilton’s Advice for Dancers: Emotional Counsel and Practical Strategies (1998) and The Student Dancer: Emotional Aspects of the Teaching and Learning of Dance (2002) by Buckroyd.
In order to gain greater insight, as well as a sense of context, it is helpful to look more broadly at the challenges faced by sexual health professionals whose primary concerns focus on the sexual and emotional well-being of children, adolescents, and young adults.
Contemporary Sexuality Education
National opinion polls in the United States and United Kingdom show that the vast majority of the adult public supports sexuality education in schools (NFER/HEA 1994; Huberman 2002). Although it appears that adults recognize the significance of sexuality education in fostering the development of healthy children and the importance of sustaining well informed sexual attitudes and behavior throughout one’s lifetime, debates concerning the structure, content, and delivery of sexuality education often derail the strong support suggested earlier. It appears that parents want someone else to tell their children about sex, but what and how they want their children to be told remains amorphous.
Young people, on the other hand, commonly describe the sex education they receive as “too little, too late,” with an overemphasis on sexual mechanics and reproduction at the expense of issues such as confidence, self-esteem, non-sexual ways of showing affection, and the pleasurable, emotional, and complex aspects of sexuality (Hughes 1999). In practice the vast majority of young people receive their first exposure to sex education after they become sexually active, without benefit of timely information (Rivers and Aggleton 1999).
Research in a number of high-income countries now suggests that despite exposure to a range of sources of sexual health information many teens have continued misconceptions and limited knowledge about how to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases or how to use condoms and other forms of contraception (Hughes 1999). Adolescents may be confused by the mixed messages they receive: on the one hand, popular media images depicting sexual activity as a glamorous and desirable activity, on the other, the juxtaposition of adult refusal to openly discuss matters of sexuality with young people.
By comparison, levels of sexual health in high-income countries suggest that open communication with parents, and an open approach to sex in the broader community, is an important determinant of the relatively good sexual health experienced by young people in countries such as The Netherlands and Sweden, compared with the US, the UK, or Canada (Rivers and Aggleton 1999). It has been reported that The Netherlands has the lowest rate of teenage sexual activity and the oldest average age for first sexual intercourse, despite the fact that the legal age for intercourse is 12. Among Dutch teenagers both boys and girls are significantly more likely to cite “love and commitment” as their primary motivation for engaging in their first sexual experience, rather than physical attraction, peers pressure, or opportunity. The latter, however, tend to be the primary reasons cited by young people in the US and UK, particularly by young men.
Providing young people with easy access to frank and consistent sex education and more effective preparation for sexual activity and relationships, requires partnerships between a range of sectors (Gillies 1998): including the media, schools, youth opinion formers, welfare agencies, health services, and representatives of parents and young people. This directive is especially important for dance educators, who like all teachers, spend a relatively large amount of time with adolescents.
Moreover, young people who are disadvantaged by factors such as socioeconomic status, ethnicity, low educational attainment, and who have low expectations for the future, are at particular risk of poor sexual health. They are less likely to have protected sex, making themselves vulnerable to sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) including HIV in the process. Throughout the developed world, unintended teenage conceptions are most common among those who have been disadvantaged in childhood and those who have poor job prospects.
Seriously confronting the root causes of low ambition and poor self-esteem in girls, starting at a very young age, can make a significant difference. Programs that include life skills education and involve young people in community work can increase self-esteem and confidence about job prospects. Programs aimed at pre-school and primary school girls result in lower rates of teenage pregnancy and better sexual health later on in life (Aggleton and Warwick 1997).
Policy Paradox
Central to its many provisions, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child gives children and adolescents the right to express their views and to have their views considered in relation to the many facets of life experience. These rights incorporate the way in which children are treated, educated, and cared for by adults and society more broadly, as well as the services that are provided and to which children have access.
This kind of humanistic vision of children and adolescents as sentient beings, inherently worthy of respect and dignity is largely in conflict with most other dominant assumptions in policy making regarding children today. Mainstream policy views of children and adolescents frequently de-emphasize the rights of the child in the name of, among other things, childhood “innocence” and “corruptibility,” (Wallis and Van Every 2000) children’s need for protection from certain adult knowledge and information, and adult expectations of childhood conformity. This paradox poses a challenge for those who advocate attending more responsively and humanely to young people’s experience, perspectives, and beliefs.
What circumstances and conditions make such a view at odds with the mainstream of dominant culture? Wallis and Van Every (2000) suggest several reasons for this contention. First, since the turn of the century prevailing depictions of “adolescence” revolve around pejorative notions of storm and stress linked to biological changes and their behavioral correlation. Within this view, young people can barely be treated as rational, still less as individuals whose perspectives should be taken seriously, or as equal to those of adults or older generations.
Second, in a good deal of mainstream literature in psychology and adolescent medicine there has been a tendency to denigrate young people and treat adolescence as a pathological condition (Friedman 1989). Adolescents are frequently viewed as “problems” for parents, teachers, clergy, and the adult population generally, to modify, police, and control for their proper role in society. Moreover, the word usage of “adolescent” has connotations that belittle (specifically, that to act “adolescent” is to be immature, less than “adult”). The notion of the “problem child” in contemporary US culture is nearly a dead metaphor, in that to a large degree the metaphor no longer resonates as one of exception, but rather the pathological norm. Friedman’s research illuminates this phenomenon when he observes:
The ostensible conflictual relationship with parents, so often described in Western societies as one of turmoil resulting from the “generation gap” is perhaps more mythical than real since it is much more common to find young people and their parents sharing the same fundamental values. The differences are likely to occur on much more ephemeral subjects. (314)
Unfortunately, these dominant views of children and adolescents, to a large degree, unwittingly emphasize deviance, wantonness, loss of control, and irrationality. These perspectives encourage us to understand young people not on their own terms but on those of an essentially adult logic, in which those who cannot be controlled through psychological, behavioral, and biomedical interventions are rendered malleable through adult pity (innocence, naiveté, lack of knowledge) and projection (corruptibility, worldliness, excessive knowledge).
To address this polemic, sexual health professionals argue that it would behove us as teachers, practitioners, administrators, and policy makers to take seriously the accounts and perspectives of children and young people – on sexual and other matters, as sometimes different but often very similar to adults in hopes, aspirations, desires, and needs (Coleman and Roker 1998). Ultimately, the key challenge for policy is how to promote environments that enable health enhancing behavior. In particular, it is important to address the quality of information that young people receive and the factors that influence their ability to act on this information.
Implications for Dance Education
The tenets of good dance education have much in common with the primary goals of sexuality education. Just as the merits of sexuality education go beyond narrow criteria, holistic dance education provides an excellent paradigm for an education in the creation and participation in a pluralistic society. Both affirm the importance and dignity of individual choice within a social collective that is inherent in Freire’s (1972) assertion that education is never neutral: it is either for freedom or for domination. Comprehensive dance and sexuality education share many common features; they both seek to enable individuals to:
• Develop and maintain physical and mental health;
• Develop and enhance decision-making skills;
• Develop and enlarge an informed understanding of diversity; and
• Form and maintain stable relationships.
Each of the articles in this volume shares many of these common, educational goals. Though each chapter emerges from a theoretical grounding, the authors highlight practical aspects and provide recommendations and insights.
Gender in Dance Education
Social foundations issues in education rooted in gender look closely at dominant cultural assumptions about femininity, masculinity, sexuality, and sexual orientation. Gender issues are significantly framed by current media depictions of what girls/women and boys/men should be and do – how they should act, behave, and look appropriate to their gender. Popular media and advertising send messages to girls and women that emphasize feminine perfection, self-doubt in females, how and what girls should be – most of which emerge from a masculinist perspective. Much of popular culture is focused on sexualized images and content, often projected more and more onto children and adolescents. These media images speak forcefully and repeatedly; schools are not invulnerable to dominant gender imag...
