I can’t. I have dance: dance competition culture as serious leisure and pre-professional training

This article provides an introductory contextualization to dance competition culture’s evolution since the early 1980s in relationship to serious leisure. Dance competition culture (which includes the for-profit regional and national  competition events focused on jazz, contemporary or lyrical dance, hip hop, tap, and ballet and the dance studios that train dancers for these events) is a significant site for dance training in the United States. Using a physical cultural studies lens in relation to the conceptualization of serious leisure, the article suggests that dance competition culture is shifting towards pre-professional dance training thereby changing dance competition culture from a serious leisure pursuit into vocational training.