Jonathan S. Marion

Becoming Popular: The Impact of Contemporary Media on the World of Competitive Ballroom Dance

For most people today, familiarity with ballroom dancing comes from its popularity on television. The current run of Strictly Come Dancing — a program in which celebrities are partnered with professional competitors — first aired in Britain in May 2004. Australia adopted the show as Dancing with the Stars (DWTS), and the same format has now been franchised and aired under one of these two names in 44 territorial variations. The U.S. version of Dancing with the Stars premiered on ABC in June 2005. The next month FOX aired So You Think You Can Dance (SYTYCD), now franchised and broadcast in at least 25 countries. Here dancers performing different styles audition against each other; finalists are then paired up and required to learn routines in varied styles each week. A regular schedule of live shows and tours capitalizes on the mainstream popularity of this programming, including DWTS cruises and spinoff theater shows such as Ballroom with a Twist, Dancing Pros Live, Move and Sway. Such venues have drastically reconfigured public awareness, popularity and employment opportunities for dancers. Starting my fieldwork on competitive ballroom dance in 2002, I was interested in why people chose to participate in an activity that did not have lots of public recognition or financial reward. In particular, I was curious about how participation in this activity contributed to personal and collective meanings and identities. Since the first season of Dancing with the Stars aired in the United States, television and movies have brought performance-based ballroom dancing to the forefront of popular culture. So while I am no longer researching the dynamics of participation without significant financial or public recognition, I have had over a decade to watch the impact of contemporary media on the world of competitive ballroom dance and the dancers involved. From my years of engagement with the ballroom world — as an anthropologist, amateur and student competitor, and professional photographer — what I have found most fascinating is the impact of contemporary media on the world of competitive ballroom dance.

File Naming in Digital Media Research: Examples from the Humanities and Social Sciences

This paper identifies organizational challenges faced by Social Science and Humanities (SSH) scholars when dealing with digital data and media, and suggests improved file naming practices in order to maximize organization, making files easier to find, more useable, and more easily shared. We argue that such skills are not formally discussed in the literature and therefore many scholars do not recognize the problem until they cannot locate a specific file or are sharing files with colleagues. We asked SSH scholars to share their file naming strategies (or lack thereof ) and we use these narrative anecdotes to discuss common problems and suggest possible solutions for their general file naming needs.

Ballroom Bodies A Series of Photographs

Accompanying Julia A. Ericksen’s feature on dance, Jonathan S. Marion provides photos and commentary to enchance our understanding of the body work of ballroom.