Análisis Porter De Las Cinco Fuerzas Competitivas

As discussed above, boys have been left uninspired by their dance education in

schools. However, some schools have attempted to enrich their dance ‘offer’ by

organising workshops and performances from visiting companies or by arranging theatre trips. Nathan (14), spoke positively of the enrichment activities organised by his school but also of their subsequent curtailment from budget cuts and the

consequent restriction in access to such cultural opportunities:

My school is short of money and last year they stopped bringing in theatre and dance companies which was a pity because I liked them, and we did some good stuff with them. Sometimes school arranges trips to the theatre

but it’s usually for plays that are being studied for exams… although we’ve had a few to theatre trips to see musicals too… but not one to see just a

dance production. But you can only go on them if you can afford it and not everyone can.

Another participant, Owen, recalled a dance company visiting his school but with mixed results:

I remember this dance company coming into school when I was in year seven and then again in year eight. There were three performers and one of them was a man. We did a workshop with them and then later they did performance. I think it was contemporary dance. I liked it, but a lot of the other lads just messed

around, especially in the workshop. They just didn’t try and there was a lot of

laughing and giggling. The guy dancer was quite funny, but it was a struggle for

him because they [the boys] didn’t take it seriously. They thought he was gay …called him all sorts –queer and all that…

Such a homophobic reaction further undermines the claims of inclusive masculinity in schools (McCormack, 2012). Furthermore, it reminds us of the limited efficacy of

the male ‘role model’ discourse in homophobic and homohysteric environments.

However, a further perspective on school-based dance workshops was offered by

Adam, now a dance administrator, but until recently, a dance in education company artist. Skilled in delivering mixed-sex workshops, Adam recalled:

The education side was really important, being able to inspire young people,

especially the boys, to feel it’s okay todance… and reduce the stigma about boys and dance…. For some of them it was a positive experience that had a

knock-on effect on the rest of their schooling… It wasn’t that dance was a big

healer and made them able to understand maths, but it gave them self- confidence and some esteem perhaps in other subjects, and particularly so

with some of the boys. It was great that…

A major part of ethos was to pass on this art form and to inspire people to participate. We covered the whole age range from nursery schools upwards.

It was brilliant… it was fab, but we had an easy job because we were ‘hit and run’. We’d go in, deliver the workshop and then leave.

Sometimes you’d get real resistance and we’d try different ways to interact

with each other. You could be devious in partnering them up, such as boy-girl circles. It would sometimes depend upon the schools as well–whether they’d

any prior dance sessions– and a lot of these workshops would be done in PE, so we were sometimes inheriting existing problems such as when a teacher had forced them into dancing boy and girl.

Adam’s narrative also alludes to the difficulties sometimes encountered in dislodging

preconceived ideas about dance in particular, or gender relations more broadly,

arising from pupils’ negative formative experiences. Although originally

conceptualised by Jackson (1968), exploring the ‘hidden curriculum’ in dance

education can reveal complex issues of gender and sexualities according to Stinson, (2005), ones which often reinforce stereotypes in wider culture. To illustrate, as

Adam attested, some schools are inclined to partner pupils with the ‘opposite’ sex,

thereby privileging heteronormativity whilst simultaneously marginalising other orientations. While such actions can be powerful deterrents, so alienating some youngsters from an activity, attempts to counter or resist such normativity can also be problematic, as evidenced by Keira, a specialist dance teacher who recounted:

I actually had a very difficult experience when I was teaching in a school, and it was the beginning of my career in 2011. We were doing contact work – lifts -in a GCSE dance class. And sometimes, boys can feel a bit funny dancing

with a girl, so I said, “Choose your partner so you feel comfortable with

them”. And two boys happened to go together, so fine. And then, after that, I was told that a parent had arrived in reception… and she said, “I don’t want

my boy having these homo experiences. I hear the teacher is pushing them on

boys.”

And I wasn’t at all. I simply asked them to choose their own partner. It was

an interesting experience because the boy in the class had no problem with it at all, he was enjoying the experience. I actually feel that the reason, really, was that he had possible gay tendencies and the mother had come into school that afternoon and she was going berserk about the fact that her boy was dancing with another boy.

I did not enforce this partnership; I only gave them the opportunity to be as comfortable as possible. It was just an odd experience for me because he had been absolutely fine and afterwards, he asked to dance with the same

boy again and I said no. What can you do? Clearly, it’s the parents who have

got some sort of dilemma, not the child.

Keira’s account reminds us that gender policing and homophobia can operate both

within and beyond the school gate. As a teacher, her acquiescence to the parent’s

wish is understandable though regrettable, since a valuable opportunity was missed to resist prejudice and tackle homophobia. However, such actions would require the support of school leaders and governors – and this was not given to Keira.

5.4 Summary

In this chapter I have presented an analysis of boys’ experiences of dance education and training in their dance schools and secondary schools, providing clear evidence of the discursive (re)production of gender therein, by boys who are subject to the

panoptic gaze of regulation, especially acute in their day schools. However, in

their dance schools, boys reported positive mainly experiences, of inclusive

communities offering them plenty of support for their endeavours. Some boys were

nonetheless aware of the privileges afforded to them because of their gender, such as being given prominent roles in public performances. A few felt it necessary to undertake gender boundary maintenance work by masculinising choreography previously regarded as ‘feminine’ to make it “kinda strong”- a reminder of the continuing pervasiveness of gender essentialism. Relatedly, aware of transgressing

gender norms, boys’ thrill in performing dance in public was sometimes marred by

their desire for privacy or anonymity, an uneasy tension that permeated their life in and beyond the dance school.

Regarding boys’ experiences of dance in their day schools, this chapter has argued that the current philosophy of dance in education, with its emphasis on ‘process’

rather than ‘product’, has failed to engage most boys (and probably girls) with the

subject, despite some ill-conceived appeals to the heteronormative in schemes of work. More broadly, the position of dance as a marginal subject within the school curriculum has also been considered, as have the potent effects of a ‘hidden curriculum’ (Jackson, 1968), which has served to re-inscribe dance as a ‘feminine’

pursuit. Consequently, my analysis suggests that dance is eschewed not only by many young male pupils, but also by some of their male P.E. teachers whose

strategies to evade or negotiate their dance provision, were explored . The shortage of specialist dance teachers, irrespective of gender, was found to be problematic for many pupils; subsequently, some boys sought alternative tuition from their dance school.

Attempts by some schools to remediate the paucity of their dance provision, by arranging visits from dance artists/companies, were found to be equally

problematic if they were underpinned by a questionable reliance on the value of

male dancers as ‘role models’ or if schools were homohysteric and/or homophobic environments. The provision of school workshops led by male ‘Dance Ambassadors’,

part of the ‘Project B’ initiative from the Royal Academy of Dance (RAD), was critiqued for its gender essentialism and its reliance on outdated masculine tropes

such as ‘superheroes’ and its masculinist comparison between sports and dance,

both of which, I argued, were graphic illustrations of a “make it macho” strategy

(Fisher, 2007). Equally troubling was the finding that in one instance, a teacher’s

attempt to contest the dominant discourses around dance and masculinity, by allowing a same-sex (male) dance partnership, was abandoned in the face of parental opposition.

In the next chapter I examine the negative consequences which, according to

participants, arose from their identity as a male dancer, and pay particular regard to their lived experiences of bullying, marginalisation and stigmatisation in their

secondary schools. The subsequent chapter analyses not only boys’ responses to

these experiences, but also explicates how they contest the dominant discourses

that code dance as a ‘feminine’ activity and them as subject to a homosexual presumption.

Chapter 6 “Obviously, you get called gay all the time”: consequences