DanceSport’s Economy of Desire examines how the DanceSport dispositive shapes its actors’ opportunities, desires, and choices to reproduce the heteronormative gender binary, focusing on the DanceSport dispositive, a network of power that spans over and influences objects (such as clothes or competition halls), discourses (such as federations’ competition regulations, syllabus books, judging criteria), and practices (dancing or choreographing).
Meneau argues that the DanceSport dispositive constrains what Latin dance can look like, despite resistance and counter-movements, by excluding or invisibilising queerness and objectifying and sexualising female dancers. This shows in all elements that affect or constitute dancers’ performances on the (competition) dance floor; that includes registration, clothing, coupling, partnering, moving, judging.
This book helps readers understand how the heteronormative gender binary works, how it plays out in all the elements that influence or make up dance, and how it manages to remain hegemonic. It demonstrates how the DanceSport dispositive affects and influences all its actors, all the time – how we think, decide, move, perceive others, or incorporate knowledge that shapes our bodies according to norms and productive power. Finally, by looking for the heteronormative gender binary in the dance and in the regulations, DanceSport’s Economy of Desire unravels the underlying mechanisms that secure the oppressive systems and allows society at large to better understand them.
By:
Val Meneau (University of Vienna Austria)
Imprint: Bloomsbury Academic
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 238mm,
Width: 154mm,
Spine: 18mm
Weight: 480g
ISBN: 9781350531680
ISBN 10: 1350531685
Pages: 216
Publication Date: 30 April 2026
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Introduction Autoethnography Chapter One: The Aesthetics of the Heteronormative Gender Binary: Invisibilising and Excluding Queerness on the Dance Floor Chapter Two: Latin DanceSport's Hyper-Sexual Subculture: Femininity at the Service of the Male Gaze Chapter Three: Gender[less/ed] Moving Bodies: From Gender-Neutral Principles to Gendered Specialisation Chapter Four: Gender[less/ed] Interactions: Partnering Paradigms Framed Within a Gendered Grammar Chapter Five: Gender[less/ed] Judging Criteria: The Heteronormative Gender Binary as a Replacement to Gender-Neutral Official Criteria Chapter Six: The Economy of Desire: Gendered Subjectivation, Trade-Offs, and the Power of the Dispositive in Reifying the Heteronormative Gender Binary Conclusion
Val Meneau (they/sie/elle) is a trans non-binary multi-disciplinary artist, researcher, activist, and lecturer in gender and queer studies. Their expertise lies in body and sexual politics at the intersection of gender, queer and critical dance studies.
Reviews for DanceSport’s Economy of Desire: A Queer-Feminist Perspective
A bold call to action against heteronormativity in the world of Dancesport. This book is a must-read for advocators for inclusivity and anyone seeking deeper inspiration on how to become a change maker for a more just society. * Yen Nee Wong, University of Leeds, UK * Bold, rigorous, and deeply reflective, this book bridges theory and lived experience to analyze power structures but also resist them, offering a vision of what an inclusive DanceSport world might look like. Meneau’s work is a courageous critique of oppressive systems and a passionate invitation to resist, reimagine, and reconfigure cisheteronormative DanceSport. Methodologically innovative and scientifically courageous, this book closes one of the most significant gaps in dance research while opening up radical new avenues. * Andrea D. Buehrmann, University of Goettingen, Germany *
