Fractured identities: injury and the balletic body

Abstract: Social worlds shape human bodies and so it is inevitable that there are strong relationships between the body, professional dance and identity. In this article we draw on Bourdieu’s notions of habitus, and various forms of capital, as the main theoretical framework for our discussion. Our ethnography of the balletic body elicited dancers and ex-dancers’ perceptions of their bodies and sought to reveal some of the facets of their embodied habitus. The sheer physicality of their working lives - of feeling exhausted, sweaty and out of breath - is something dancers (like all athletes) become ‘addicted to’. Ageing and injury can reveal this compulsion to dance and so dancers invariably find it very difficult to, for example, give up class once they retire from the stage; or miss a performance if they have a ‘slight injury’. In other words, the vocational calling to dance is so overwhelming that their balletic body is their identity. In addition, there is an unremitting loop between indi

Angaben zum Objekt

• Standort: Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Frankfurt am Main
• Umfang: Online-Ressource
• Sprache: Englisch
• Anmerkungen: Postprint ; begutachtet (peer reviewed) ; In: Health ; 9 (2005) 1 ; 49-66

Klassifikation und Themen

• Klassifikation: Theater, Tanz

Beteiligte, Orts- und Zeitangaben

• Ereignis: Veröffentlichung
• (wo): Mannheim
• (wann): 2005
• Urheber: Wainwright, Steven P. ; Williams, Clare ; Turner, Bryan S.

Weitere Informationen

• DOI: 10.1177/1363459305048097
• URN: urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-225853
• Rechteinformation: Open Access unbekannt; Open Access; Der Zugriff auf das Objekt ist unbeschränkt möglich.
• Letzte Aktualisierung: 25.03.2025, 13:46 MEZ