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Paper short abstract:

Social dancing in the Philippines is embedded in a mode of relationality between dancers based on 'taking care of each other', which creates a continuum between the artistic, social and sport realm of dancing and the private realm of personal needs.

Paper long abstract:

Social dancing in the Philippines is not merely reflective of, but integral to society. It did not create a new way of being, but rather developed into a specific mode of sociability and relationality; that is, between dancers, in relation to eminent sociocultural norms in Philippine society concerning care-taking.

In Western Europe and the United States of the 1980s many ballrooms had to close their doors because social dancing was clearly losing its appeal to younger generations. In the process of being replaced by more exotic styles such as Argentine tango and salsa, it merely survived as dance sport, in ballroom competition. During the same period, however, social dancing became booming business for Manila's hotels and restaurants that opened dance venues for an ever growing number of well-to-do, middle-aged women and their dance instructors/partners (DIs). Only during the past decade these ballrooms are suffering from competition from dance studios that have been emerging since the Philippines joined the international sport arena of ballroom dancing in 1996. This development, however, is neither extinguishing social dancing and dance halls completely, nor changing the relationship between the women and their DIs in ways detrimental to social and ballroom dancing's continuity. It rather adds an ambitious dimension to the dancing, in which an often much younger, male dancer gets paid by his female partner to not only be her dancing partner and instructor at social events, choreographer or personal fitness coach in a studio, but also as her personal assistant, servant, care-taker, nurse, companion, lover. It is not a mere professional relationship, but extends into the private realm, thereby creating a continuum between skill, art and sport, and its sociocultural context. This paper seeks to explain that it is this continuum that ensures the continuity of social dancing in the Philippines.