Social Partner Dance

<p>Social Partner Dance: Body Sound and Space is an ethnographic theory of social partner dancing built on participant observation and interviews with instructors of tango lindy hop salsa blues and various other forms. The work establishes a general analytical language for the study of these dances based on the premise that a thorough understanding of any lead/follow form must consider in depth how it manages the four-part relationship between self partner music and surroundings. Each chapter begins with a brief vignette on a distinct dance form and explores the focused worlds of partnered dancing done for the joy and entertainment of the dancers themselves. Grounded intellectually in embodiment studies and sensory ethnography and empirically in ethnographic fieldwork <i>Social Partner Dance</i> promotes scholarship that understands the social cultural and political functions of partner dance through its embodied practice.</p>