Glamour Addiction: Inside the American Ballroom Dance Industry (Hardcover)

by Juliet McMains (Author)
Key Phrases: ballroom industry, social ballroom dance, ballroom dance program, United States, Glamour Machine, Arthur Murray (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"The only book I know that explores the contemporary practice of ballroom dancing and its professional manifestation, DanceSport. It is a significant contribution to the literature in dance studies and gender and sexuality studies." (Ann Dils, associate professor, Department of Dance, University of North Carolina, Greensboro )

Product Description
In the wake of the blockbuster television success of "Dancing with the Stars," competitive ballroom dance has become a subject of new fascination--and renewed scrutiny. Known by its practitioners as DanceSport, ballroom is a significant dance form and a fascinating cultural phenomenon. In this first in-depth study of the sport, dancer and dance historian Juliet McMains explores the "Glamour Machine" that drives the thriving industry, delving into both the pleasures and perils of its seductions. She further explores the broader social issues invoked in American DanceSport: representation of "Latin," economics that often foster inequality, and issues of identity, including gender, race, class, and sexuality.

Putting ballroom dance in the larger contexts of culture and history, Glamour Addiction makes an important contribution to dance studies, while giving new and veteran enthusiasts a unique and unprecedented glimpse behind the scenes.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 268 pages
• Publisher: Wesleyan (November 17, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0819567744
• ISBN-13: 978-0819567741
• Product Dimensions: 10.1 x 7.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #306,845 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating!, January 26, 2007

By	Jane Harrison (Seattle WA) - See all my reviews

While this book is academic and a bit slow at times, I found it to be overall a very worthwhile read. As someone who was briefly a ballroom dancer, I found McMains book to be deliciously insightful. As she describes it, the DanceSport industry is kept alive by the allure of Glamour. Professionals and amateurs alike are drawn to the high-class glamorous ideal that ballroom portrays, and rather than fulfilling their desires, the industry just creates the need to invest more time, money, and energy to the pursuit. The DanceSport system seems to succeed not by making people happier, but rather by emotionally manipulating them and promising that fulfillment and happiness are waiting for them at just the next step (after taking one more class, one more private lesson, one more competition). In telling this story she describes the mix of people drawn to DanceSport and the challenges and exploitative situations they are faced with. She also gives a fascinating history of social dancing, and how it was slowly and often intentionally modified to fit the needs of a competition based industry (when reading the table of contents I assumed this chapter would be one of the dullest, but it ended up being one of the best). McMains also investigates the portrayal of "Latinness" in DanceSport, and convincingly argues that performances are racially charged and in many ways a form of "brownface." She also examines the portrayal of gender and heterosexual courtship, and wonders why such rigid roles are assumed to be an inherent and unchangeable part of the sport. But the book is not merely a laundry list of grievances against the ballroom dance industry. McMains is sensitive to multiple sides of each issue, and it is clear that despite everything, she loves ballroom dance (she was a competitor herself) and has faith in its good qualities. It was a very rewarding read.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Thought Provoking Book, July 2, 2008

By	M. Perdue (New York, NY) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I disagreed with some of the author's ideas, but I'm giving the book five stars anyway, because I enjoyed how thought-provoking it was. The part that I disagreed with particularly was in how much dance is an addiction. It's true, we dancers spend a lot of money and a lot of time on our hobby. In my case, if I have spare time and spare money, it's going into dance lessons and costumes. But I have a friend who is a golfer, and his spare time and money goes into golfing. Same with my bridge-playing friend, who travels to tournaments all over the world. And how about my mathematician friend who loves numbers so much that he went deeply into debt to get a PhD in mathematics? Today he loves his numbers so much that if it were a question of a hot date or an evening with his equations, I think the hot date would win out, but I can't be sure. Are these people addicted? Or is it more simply that in a capitalist economy, people have more spare time and more spare money than ever before, and they're going to spend these resources in the ways that give them the most pleasure?

Anyway, I loved the book. It was thought-provoking as well as full of new information.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dancing at the Revolution: two books, two academics, one message, August 1, 2007

By	tamiii "tamiii" (San Juan Capistrano, Ca. United States) - See all my reviews

Surprisingly, in 2006, two different writers, Juliet McMains and Caroline Picart, have independently written two remarkable books with very similar themes. Each unearths how British Imperialism assimilated African forms, stripped them of their roots and disciplined them into the 'universalist' cultural expression, practiced today in the white male dominated 'industry' known as Dancesport. Each hopes that art might triumph to express a more egalitarian norm, one where women and people of color might be permitted greater freedom though both locate the barriers in class, race, and gender--that is money. To those who would scoff at their hope, I would tell the story of yet another dancer, the venerated agitator Emma Goldman, who, though asked to stop dancing at a social gathering when she was told of a comrade's death, reportedly responded: "If I can't dance, it is not my revolution!" For her, it was all about life and joy, the one fountain from which both artistic and political change flowed. Here, McMains and Picart keep that spirit alive.