When the dancing went wrong, the evening went right : An argument for ageing and changing cultural practice

Abstract

Inspired by a line dancing club in Stoke-on-Trent, and drawing principally on cultural theorist Raymond Williams, this article makes the case for appreciating the ways that cultural practices age and change over time. This group of line dancers held a deep, long, and collective familiarity with their practice, and through this intimacy an idiosyncratic attitude to dancing mistakes emerged. Taking these mistakes, collectively recast by dancers as ‘variations’, as the central empirical focus, I describe a sense of collective agency manifesting a solidaristic style of ageing together. Raymond Williams helps make this articulation political: in defending the time and space needed for such attitudes around practice to emerge, and the attitudes themselves.

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