Yen Nee Wong’s Equality DanceSport focuses on the experiences of equality dancers in the United Kingdom. Equality dancesport is the name given by the queer dance community internationally to “competitive ballroom dancing conducted in gender-neutral dance partnerships characteristically formed within the LGBT+ ballroom dance scene” (3). The dance field is based on the heteronormative international-style ballroom dance – or “the classical dance form” in Yen Nee’s words, which includes both Standard (slow waltz, tango, Viennese waltz, slow foxtrot and quickstep) and Latin dances (samba, cha cha cha, rumba, paso doble and jive). The author’s approach is to “take the readers through an initiation journey into becoming an equality dancesport competitor” (1), going through common such as finding a partner, choosing a dance role, choosing teachers, creating choreographies, and selecting costumes for competitions.

Yen Nee starts their first Chapter, the introduction, with an autoethnographic hook and an explanation of why they chose this topic. They also describe the central questions they explore in the book before moving on to a theoretical description of gender, sexuality, and methods for the social analysis of ballroom dancing. The first two central questions - “How are concepts of masculinities and femininities understood and materialised on the competitive dancefloor by equality dancers?” and “What level of importance do equality dancers attribute to the expression of sexual identities on the dancefloor and how do they achieve it?” - allow them to examine the ways in which equality dancers perform gender and sexuality. In doing so, they focus on the rationales that equality dancers mobilise to make choices, exploring how they “resist, while being at the same time constrained by, the influence of traditional, normative gender binaries in their performative displays of alternative masculinities, femininities and sexualities” (16).

With their third question, “In what ways do institutional contexts and representational conventions of mainstream dancesport influence dancers’ materialisation of their gender and sexual identities?” (6), Yen Nee is able to critically explore how the journey of equality dancers is informed by and interacts with the heteronormative competitive ballroom dance scene, the overarching Western culture, the LGBT+ scene and its culture, and finally, the equality social dancing scene. Wong meticulously “illuminates the complex articulations of genders and sexualities, and how the body politics of equality dancers are informed by an interplay of both structure and agency” (16).

The author builds their case by historically contextualising the emergence of equality dancing (Chapter 2). In Chapter 3, they discuss the different routes of entry into equality dancesport through the search for a dance partner. Chapter 4 highlights the decision-making processes that equality dancers go through when choosing a dance role. Chapter 5 focuses on dance choreographies and the ways in which they contribute to the social production of sexed, gendered and sexual bodies. This production takes place in co-creation between the dancers and their dance teacher. As dancers mobilise certain body politics in their routines, the choice of the right teacher becomes an important issue. In Chapter 6, Wong focuses on aspects of gender presentation (costume, make-up and shoes). Finally, Chapter 7 summarises the main findings, highlighting the “impossibility of detaching the heterosexual matrix of mainstream ballroom dancing from all aspects of equality dance practice” (165).

Yen Nee uses a sociological approach to equality dancesport, centring on Judith Butler’s performative body (Reference Butler1999), Paul B. Preciado’s queer multitudes (Reference Preciado2003), Sara Ahmed’s (re-)orientations (Reference Ahmed2007), Pierre Bourdieu’s habitus (Reference Bourdieu2002), and Edmund Husserl’s sensory body (Reference Husserl, Kersten and Bernet1982). Drawing on and extending these theories, the author uses autoethnography, in-depth interviews, and embodied fieldwork conducted between 2018 and 2020, when they “participated in equality dancesport as both a competitor and photographer” (14). Their embodied fieldwork consisted of 6 to 10 hours a week dancing at various dance schools and competing in the UK/Europe. They also conducted participant observation “in the private lessons which I attended with my dance partners, dance practice sessions, social dance events, workshops / masterclasses and dance competitions” (13), collecting data in the form of field notes and diary entries. Although not documented, Wong’s prior experience as a social dancer and competitor informs their understanding of the scene as well, as their research process and decisions. Moreover, Wong conducted in-depth interviews with 35 equality dancers. Their sample represented a range of genders and sexualities, and their selection process was informed in part by their “personal knowledge of the participants and their intention to achieve as much diversity as possible” 13). Their sample is predominantly white and middle class, reflecting the subculture in general, which lacks “ethnic and socio-economic diversity” (15). These methods allow Yen Nee to “turn the spotlight onto equality dancing as a space which queers mainstream ballroom dance practices by encouraging politicised exploration of gender and sexuality” (13).

The book contains photographs, half of which taken by Yen Nee themself, which are used to give an impression of the dance events (e.g., the Pink Jukebox competition in London, p.2) or to invite the reader into the atmosphere of a competition (e.g., the preparations for a competition, p.125). Some photographs are also used to show the classical dance form (90) or to discuss dance elements such as the physical connection (107) or the dancers’ presentations (for example, costumes on p.133 or shoes on pp.147, 149). The book concludes with a diagram of the proposed sociological framework for examining identity work in dance or sport practices.

Yen Nee brilliantly argues that the queer dance habitus predominant in the field of equality dancesport is not queer, “in Butler’s understanding of the term” (175), in the critical and political sense. While queerness, for Judith Butler, is “always and only redeployed […] in the direction of urgent and expanding political purposes” (Butler Reference Butler1993, 228), Yen Nee notes that the “various constraints placed upon dancers’ queering and troubling of the classical dance form make the identity of an agentic dancer a ‘fabricated’ one premised upon the embodiment and reproduction of a normalised queer dance habitus which can be apprehended by social others” (169). This phenomenon caused equality dancesport to cease to be queer (175). The limiting impact of this crystallised queer dance habitus on dance roles and costuming is one clear example. Yen Nee convincingly explains that although dance roles are not assigned on the basis of gender, equality dancers reproduce gender binaries by assuming, for example, that the leader must be the taller person, thereby reproducing heteronormative expectations that originate in heteronormative dancesport. Similarly, switching roles within the dance has become unpopular because dancers who specialise in one role become more proficient in it and are therefore more likely to be competitive than dancers who switch roles (86, 89). In this way, dancers’ choices are influenced by their interest in assimilation, which limits their explorations of gender and sexuality on the dance floor.

But Wong only superficially discusses the role adjudicators play in crystallising the queer dance habitus. They mention the value judgements of adjudicators (78) and the fact that adjudicators tend to come from the mainstream 173), therefore reproducing the structures they are familiar with. This state of affairs influences the dancers’ choices, leading to the adoption of fixed roles for better results (89) or the “alignment with the classical aesthetics” of the tall leader and the flexible follower (84). The most egregious example given by Yen Nee is the one of a same-sex female couple, Casey and Cassidy, who refused to wear make-up to adorn the idealised feminine look, and were ranked lower “despite their recognisably superior dance skills” (153). They then dressed up for the final and secured the win. The author concludes that “though adorning the classical look to secure the gold medal, Casey and Cassidy emphasised their message of resistance and highlighted the biasness of adjudication which prioritised appearances over dance skills” (153). Although I am aware of the need for the book to focus on a specific aspect, I regret the lack of critical consideration of judging and the role of adjudicators in maintaining and valuing the “classical aesthetics” (173).

Moreover, Yen Nee explains that dancesport is conventionally structured in same-sex categories, meaning that male/male couples and female/female couples do not compete against each other. The author convincingly argues that same-sex segregation creates barriers to the participation of trans*Footnote ¹, non-binary and gender non-conforming dancers, and invisibilises queer intimacies, such as bisexual, pansexual and polyamorous love – all those that are not mono-amorous gay and lesbian relationships 167-68). An explanation of why the scene is conventionally structured around the segregation of same-sex categories would have been a welcome addition and would have fitted well into the second chapter. However, in their section in Chapter 2 on “1990 to Present: Institutionalising Equality DanceSport’, Yen Nee only explains how equality competitions are structured, not why.

Overall, Wong’s work provides a much-needed entry point into the world of equality dancesport and brilliantly highlights the interplay between agency and structure in the identity work of competitors. The author mentions exclusionary rules and discourses, and explains that the proximity of the form of equality dance to the heteronormative field, as well as the centrality of the idea of competition, leads to the restriction of diversity in the gender and sexual expression of the dancers, “limiting the transgressive ability of equality dancesport” (169). In this way, Yen Nee Wong’s book Equality Dancesport paves the way for much-needed future research.