1. Introduction
[1.1] In January 2024, the Ohio State University (OSU) and University of Minnesota (UofM) dance teams went viral on social media for their performances at the Universal Dance Association (UDA) College Nationals competition. OSU won first and UofM second in the Division 1A Jazz category (Barry 2024; Leib 2024). With over 13 million TikTok views (https://www.tiktok.com/@emeraldterrell_/video/7323330870000061726?lang=en), UofM's routine to Aerosmith's "Dream On" has surpassed OSU's performance video with over 8 million TikTok views (https://www.tiktok.com/@ohiostatedanceteam/video/7324026004895321390?lang=en), gaining additional national coverage after Aerosmith and Minnesota's governor Tim Walz shared UofM's dance on social media (Leib 2024). This flurry of attention on university dance teams is rare. In fact, UDA's national competition, colloquially called the "Dance Super Bowl," and others (note 1) can be rather insular events. Unlike in other collegiate sports, dancers, their families, and coaches are often the primary audiences for in-person, televised, and online broadcasts of these competitions. Wider fan bodies of educational institutions instead encounter dance teams on the sidelines at other sports games, leading cheers and performing at halftime.
[1.2] This unexpected focus on university dance teams has renewed debates about whether the practice is a sport since it is not currently recognized by the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA). Without this official sanctioning, "dancers are not guaranteed the same perks student athletes receive, such as scholarships and fixed weekly training hours" (Barry 2024). Instead, dance teams, like cheerleaders, mascots, and bands, are part of collegiate Spirit Squads. Beyond perks for individual dancers, Spirit Squads cannot access as many resources as can official sports teams. Notably, I am here referring to institutionally sanctioned dance teams rather than student-led clubs or official yet culturally specific teams like majorettes at HBCUs. The dominant demographic participating in this type of dance team is often young, able-bodied, cis White girls and women (note 2), which ties into its integral connections to wider US competition dance practices (Schupp 2020) (note 3). In scholarly and mainstream discourses, the often interchangeable terms "competition" or "studio" dance usually refer to one of the most prevalent types of formal dance training for US adolescents, in which dancers learn styles including tap, jazz, contemporary, hip-hop, and more at private studios to compete in traveling corporate competitions (Weisbrod 2010; Foster 2019). Official scholastic dance team practices regularly overlap with studio dance as many dancers and teachers participate in both, especially in my primary ethnographic site of Louisville, Kentucky. Dance team practices might then be considered a subgenre of competition dance broadly, which is largely situated within secondary and post-secondary schools.
[1.3] Despite the increasing popularity of competition dance nationally since its emergence in the late 1970s, it has only gained scholarly attention recently, with research on dance teams even more marginalized. Dance and performance studies research specifically on dance teams largely explicates how faculty can better support performers who often feel isolated in university degree programs that exclude dance team styles and primarily offer concert dance styles, like modern or ballet (Franks 2023). In sports studies, most dance team research focuses on improving dancers' fitness, efficiency, and mental health (Sharma et al. 2008; Killion and Culpepper 2014; Maljak and Hilton 2023), while the practice has yet to be centered in fan studies. This literature gap is unsurprising given ongoing debates about dance as an art form, sport, or entertainment practice (Guarino 2015; Markula 2018; Tacuri et al. 2023). For example, institutionalized dance spaces have historically prioritized concert dance styles to establish dance as a "high art" while overlooking and/or harshly critiquing dance practices oriented toward entertainment (Hamera 2019). In mainstream discourses, debates about categorizing dance are frequently linked to value assessments and the feminization of dance within Western society (Risner 2009). In contexts venerating sports, which are usually more patriarchal, people largely center dance's athleticism to argue for sport status; people often claim this diminishes the artistry of dance in settings prioritizing creativity (Wigenroth 2019). I am less interested in answering these debates than in examining how the location of dance, and specifically dance teams, within this liminal position between athletic and creative practice places it within fan studies frameworks, while expanding dance, sports, and fan studies discourses.
[1.4] Dance teams specifically illustrate the performativity of fan practices and identities within the affective economies of educational institutions as athletic brands. I outline how the role of dance team members constitutes an institutionally appointed fan-athlete, which can be considered alongside archetypal roles like the antifan or acafan. Institutionally appointed fan-athletes regularly fluctuate between fan and athlete roles, even performing them simultaneously. Close examination of dancers' choreographed movements and expressed motivations can emphasize the performativity of fan behaviors (Lamerichs 2011; Duffett 2015) and raise questions about dancers' authenticity as sports fans (De Kloet and Van Zoonen 2007). Still, educational institutions often capitalize upon dancers' performed attachments to deepen wider community investments in their sports fandoms. In this way, dance teams further fan studies discourses on the consumption and commodification of fan labors (De Kosnik 2013) by showing how educational institutions "[unlock] the power of athletics as a brand driver" (Hayes and Bunt 2023). Further, dominant aesthetic priorities and demographic trends toward White women participants show how these fannish performances and their attendant brand promotions can overwhelmingly perpetuate White supremacist and cis heteropatriarchal social structures, despite mainstream perceptions of dance teams offering female empowerment. The practice is consistent with scholarship exposing how fan communities often center whiteness (Pande 2018; Woo 2018) yet also troubles the binary between affirmational and transformational fandoms (obsession_inc 2009; Hills 2014) through physically altering movements that reinforce hegemonic power relations.
[1.5] Thus, I examine dance teams as institutionally appointed fan-athletes, using a dance studies approach to illuminate tensions between fan performativity and authenticity as well as commodification and consumption. I argue that scholastic institutions often utilize dance team performances, which regularly appropriate Black aesthetics and feminize affective regulation, to generate positive connections to the school's sports branding. I begin by outlining my methods, describing how I am bringing dance studies methodologies into fan studies. I then explain how dancers perform fannish attachments, even if they are not wholly authentic to institutional athletic brands, in choreographies that largely rely upon the fungibility of blackness. Following this, I consider how institutions commodify their dancers while fans consume them. I use the University of Louisville's (UofL) dance team, the Ladybirds, as a primary example of dance team practices, though I draw from other collegiate and high school performances. The Ladybirds set standards for dance team practices not just in Louisville but throughout the United States. They have won twenty national championships in the last twenty-nine years, are one of the nation's "most televised dance teams" (Louisville Cardinals n.d.), and are featured on the Lifetime reality television show So Sharp (2017). I close describing how institutionally appointed fan-athletes trouble the affirmational/transformational binary in fan studies and emphasize how dance teams and fans might challenge the hegemonic power relations discussed in this article.
2. Methods: Bringing dance studies into fan studies
[2.1] My theorization of the institutionally appointed fan-athlete and its contribution to fan studies is indebted to dance studies methodologies, particularly choreographic analysis and critical ethnography. Challenging textual bias in the academy, choreographic analysis closely examines physical movements, explicating their social, political, and historical registers (Foster 1986). Given that bodily practices are contextually specific and can be read in multiple ways, critical ethnography is commonly used in dance studies alongside choreographic analysis to situate dances according to the specificities of performers and their environments. With the lack of research on dance teams, gathering firsthand perspectives on the practice through ethnographic interviews and observations has also been critical for this study. My examination of dance team performances and interviews with various stakeholders spans high school and collegiate dance team practices and includes media content to highlight continuities across mediated and in-person settings as well as age groups. Although people of color, people from other economic classes, male, and nonbinary people do participate, I specifically emphasize White, middle-class, female participants and underscore how norms relating to dance team practices reinforce racialized and gendered power structures. This focus foregrounds the hegemonic position within dance team fandoms, which directly hails the most participants based on affiliation and identity. Thus, my analysis highlights how whiteness is a negatively constructed social formation that relies upon blackness to come into being (Dyer 1997; Morrison 2007)—in this case, with largely young, White female performers utilizing Black vernacular dance for self-actualization and dance team success.
[2.2] My analysis centers observations from seven dance team competitions and six in-person interviews, all held in Louisville and surrounding areas. Since 2021, I have had Institutional Review Board approval for observations of dance competitions and qualitative interviews with adult competition dance stakeholders. In the interviews I utilize for this article, participants were recruited through direct outreach and snowball sampling and include, among others, the following cis women (note 4):
- [2.3]two former Ladybirds dancers in their late twenties and early thirties: one White (Former Ladybird 1, interviewed August 10, 2021) and one mixed-race (Former Ladybird 2, interviewed July 8, 2021)
- one White former Ladybirds dancer and former competition dance teacher in her early thirties (Former Ladybird 3, interviewed July 26, 2021)
- and Sheryl Knight, a Black former Ladybirds dancer and their current head coach with twenty-five years of service to UofL (interviewed July 27, 2021)
[2.4] All but one of these interviewees began their participation in competitive dance in early childhood and all began participating in dance team practices as teens if not before. Their views cannot, nor should they be expected to, cover the totality of dance team experiences. Rather, they offer a window into the lived experiences of people who have devoted and/or continue to devote their lives to these practices in different ways.
[2.5] My interest in dance team practices, especially in Louisville, is admittedly personal. I am a cis White settler woman with over twelve years of professional concert dance experience, who grew up participating in competitive dance in Louisville. Though I was never a Ladybird, I was a childhood fan, learned dance at a local feeder studio for the team—at which they now regularly practice—and was taught by Knight, their current head coach, among others. Many of my friends danced for the Ladybirds after graduating high school, while I pursued a career in experimental concert dance elsewhere. In this article, I draw on my simultaneously insider and outsider position to the competition and dance team communities of my childhood, while aiming to disrupt oppressive norms in dance team practices within and beyond this geographic site.
3. Performing the fan: Institutionally appointed fan-athlete authenticity
[3.1] Utilizing this dance studies approach exposes tensions between fan performativity and authenticity in dance team performances. Dance teams engage in quintessential fan practices by "poaching" and (re)performing characters and/or individual movements from transmedia content that spans dance and other popular movies, reality and scripted television shows, social media posts, and live practices and performances. At high school competitions I have attended since December 2021, choreographies have depicted The Matrix, The Hunger Games, Joker, Barbie, Charlie's Angels, and Kill Bill, among other franchises. By literally embodying aesthetics and movements from these narratives, characters, and/or other popular trends, onstage dance team performances might be read as choreographed cosplay with distinct differences. Nicolle Lamerichs (2011) describes how cosplayers aim to authentically perform characters and in doing so transform their own identities through fiction, imagination, and desire. While dancers execute similar fannish performances, differing roles within dance team practices—from coaches to choreographers to dancers themselves—prompt queries about the authenticity of dancers as fans of the content they perform. For example, although UofM's viral performance to "Dream On" might be considered an Aerosmith fan performance, dancers on the team may not be Aerosmith fans. In fact, UofM dance seniors stated that the song choice and choreography were an homage to the team's first national championship win in 2006, which was also performed to "Dream On" (Leib 2024). Thus, while externally the team may appear to be performing as fans of Aerosmith, many were actually performing as fans of dance, and specifically fans of their own dance team.
[3.2] This UofM example highlights how dancers, choreographers, and coaches may not always hold fan attachments to material in their choreographies, instead sometimes selecting music, themes, costumes, and more to win competitions. Similarly, dancers may simply execute choreographies given to them. Unlike fan performances in other contexts, which are often discussed as emerging through intense affective charges—like love, or for antifans, hate—at times dance team members may perform as fans without necessarily having strong fan attachments. That is, they may not be "authentic" fans of the franchises they embody, though most former dancers interviewed said it could deepen their connection to the performance if they were. Whether dancers genuinely hold fan attachments to choreographic content or not, they often aim to perform as if they do so that competition judges and audiences believe their portrayals and are moved by their performances (Universal Dance Association n.d.). Dance teams highlight how fan performances can involve believably acting as fans regardless of the felicitousness of one's affective attachments (Austin 1975).
[3.3] Further, dance team performances raise questions about what is authentic to educational brands since choreographies may emphasize pop culture references external to the institution. Although the UofM dancers were imitating an earlier iteration of their team, squads often gain social capital through competition wins by reperforming movement or narrative content from outside their educational institutions. Here, attention to movement within competition choreographies can illuminate what dance teams specifically affirm for institutional brands. Across styles, normative dance team practices largely prioritize drilling approximately three-minute choreographies with nonstop movements and spectacularized athletic feats. Much of the movement vocabulary tends to derive from historic and contemporary Black popular dance forms, like jazz and hip-hop. Trending Black popular dances are also regularly utilized in dance styles originating beyond the African diaspora as a purportedly innovative twist on the choreography, as are dances from other communities of color (note 5). For example, whacking and voguing are currently prevalent on dance team stages, whether in hip-hop categories or sprinkled into other styles.
[3.4] Although choreographies often appropriate Black popular dances, valorized aesthetics in competition judging largely privilege European American movement norms, particularly through their emphasis on spectacularized tricks (Universal Dance Association n.d.). While each routine is different, these acrobatic elements are generally standardized within each division. Pom—which includes sharp, shape-oriented movements with pom-poms—and jazz choreographies usually feature "seconds" turns (derived from ballet's à la seconde turns) in which dancers repeatedly spin with one leg and both arms laterally floating parallel to the floor and opening and closing with each rotation. Frequently completed by some or all of the team, these rotations in unison with collective, short pauses between each spin, highlight the sameness across bodies for audiences and judges. In pom, game day, and jazz categories there are often multiple split-leg leaps and jumps like toe touches. Hip-hop choreographies usually include head springs, derived from breakdancing movements, where dancers bend forward into a headstand and then arch their backs, push off their hands, flip over, and land on their feet. Across categories, most jumps, and movement broadly, are executed in unison with costumes, hair, and make-up styled as identically as possible. These movements can take countless hours of practice to achieve individually and even more to execute together. Many teams utilize a "technique" class outside regular practices for dancers to perfect these tricks individually and then learn and drill choreographies during practices until they are performed perfectly in unison.
[3.5] Dance team trends and judging priorities commonly using Black popular dances and emphasizing spectacularized movements are consistent with dance studies scholars' descriptions of choreographic expressions of whiteness. Researchers have shown how extended limbs emanating from a taut torso—necessary for seconds turns, split leaps and jumps, and even head springs—have been integral to dance aesthetics constructed in relation to whiteness and possessive individualism (Savigliano 1995; Dixon Gottschild 1996). Associating balletic forms, like seconds turns, with technique and prioritizing them in judging has also been connected to the normative whiteness of competitive dance settings (Weisbrod 2010; Schupp 2020). Others detail how a priority for sameness through unison, costuming, hair, and make-up reinforces White dominance (Wakamatsu 2020) and can perpetuate militant totalitarianism (Newhall 2002). Black physicalities have historically been made available to White youth through dance media content (McRobbie 1997; DeFrantz 2012) and to White women choreographers and dancers through live interactions with dancers of color (Srinivasan 2007; Kraut 2016, 2019). This has enabled the self-actualization and profit of White performers and their communities. Brenda Dixon Gottschild (1996) specifically exposes how White choreographers and dancers have historically "refined" (165) Black popular dances to match European American aesthetics—shifting physical forms to straighter lines, codifying improvisatory practices, and so on—and have thus capitalized on Black creative productions and made them more palatable to White communities. Following these patterns, dance team choreographies often rely upon the fungibility of blackness, rendering it an empty signifier for the projection of White desires (Hartman 1997), as performers utilize Black popular dance to gain social capital by winning competitions.
[3.6] Questions of authenticity from the practice's performative registers then extend into ongoing discourses about appropriation and cultural exchange, especially if a choreographer or coach is Black while most participants are young, middle-class White girls and women. Movements can be learned in many ways, from watching and emulating dance media and live performances to learning directly from choreographers, coaches, and/or teammates for extended or intensive time periods. These training norms can obfuscate the appropriative and expropriative dynamics of the practice for participants. While nuances of individual exchanges and specific experiences are beyond this article's scope, overarching dynamics of hegemonic dance team practices can be considered through dance scholar Imani Kai Johnson's framing of appropriation as a spectrum (2020). For her, non-Black dancers performing Black cultural forms may move beyond appropriation if they engage with the history of the form, center Africanist aesthetics, and make a "deep cultural investment that is lived every day and not merely put on for show or for exploitative profit" (199). Unfortunately, dance team norms largely lean toward cultural appropriation, even if dances are not learned in all-White environments, due to pedagogies prioritizing perfected routines over dance histories; choreographies overwhelmingly centering European American aesthetics even when featuring Black dance forms; and teams utilizing Black popular dances for performative clout rather than cultural investments. These appropriative, transmedia fan practices highlight how the fungibility of blackness has historically and contemporarily been used to sustain capitalist economies including through dance performances (Hartman 1997; DeFrantz 2012). Specifically, dance teams largely further these anti-Black trends as educational institutions mobilize their performances of blackness warped into the image of White femininity within the affective economies of their sports fandoms.
[3.7] While the next section explores how institutions use dance teams to deepen attachments to sports brands, it is important to note that executing fannish choreographies on the sidelines at sports games can also impact dancers' attachments to institutions, even if they are not originally sports fans. Dancers may not necessarily love basketball or football or even their dances to cheer for these teams but instead perform fannish attachments as part of their role in the institution's athletic ecosystem. Discussing the transition from high school to collegiate dance teams, Former Ladybird 3 told me, "I mean, [after high school] you want to find other ways to continue to [dance], which is why I did Ladybirds." Thus, like UofM's 2024 "Dream On" performers, dancers may be fans of dance itself. If so, participation on dance teams, including performing as institutional fans, can sometimes be the only formal avenue to pursue that love of dance, especially after high school. Relatedly, Former Ladybird 2 stated, "I went into dance team wanting to dance. And realized once I got there, I had to learn cheers for sidelines. I had to learn spirit songs…And I was like, I'm here to dance…It was a big emotional challenge." This interviewee highlighted how dance team practices can also serve to bind dancers to institutional brands and develop their fan attachments further. She later shared, "When you're on the floor, [or] on the court, and you're looking out…everyone is excited to be there and watch the basketball team perform. And they're not there for you, but…you feel that energy. And there were moments of like, just goose bumps…wow, not a lot of people get to do that. And so that's really special." In other words, although performing sideline cheers and game dances often felt like a departure from the love of dance that brought her to the Ladybirds, the energy of fans in the stadium could still make those experiences incredibly rewarding and deepen her attachment to the team. Even if dancers' sports fan attachments are not wholly authentic initially, then, viscerally feeling other fans' attachments while performing can generate and/or deepen fannish feelings, which can be especially insidious if these performances also affirm racialized and gendered power structures without the knowledge of practitioners and/or fans.
4. "Put on a happy face": Fan consumption and institutional commodification of dancers
[4.1] While dance team choreographies highlight how dancers may not always perform as authentic fans, schools regularly position dance team members as fungible objects within their affective economies, capitalizing on successful individual and team performances to represent the institution widely. In this section, I draw extensively on the Ladybirds' example, outlining how UofL leverages their performances and how being consumed by others impacts dancers. Dancers represent the institution in their primary role cheering on sidelines at sports games, where most fans encounter them, and during appearances at events unrelated to athletics, which Former Ladybird 2 said included donor meetings and corporate and government-run events. At games, dancers lead fans in cheers, dance to music blasted through the stadium, and perform halftime routines, which are typically shorter than competition choreographies with fewer spectacularized movements. Dance teams act as formal fans affectively guiding other fans' support of scholastic sports teams. Additionally, dancers are usually present for tailgating activities, taking photos with fans, and in the Ladybirds' case, selling face tattoos, calendars, and so on; according to Knight and Former Ladybird 2, this is required fundraising to support Ladybirds' activities throughout the year. The team's need for fundraising cannot be separated from the NCAA's exclusion of dance teams and their subsequently limited resources compared to official sports teams. In fact, the Ladybirds' former head coach Todd Sharp said he tried "not to ever say no" to events where Ladybirds represent UofL (quoted in Thomas n.d.). Knight echoed this sentiment, connecting it to the potential for more support for the team, including budget increases. Within these efforts to secure more resources, the Ladybirds also promote UofL at charity events, which Former Ladybirds 1 and 2 told me were enjoyable yet exhausting and frequent. Former Ladybird 2 said newer team members "paid their dues" at appearance-based performances since often only a few dancers needed to attend as anonymous Ladybirds. In other words, UofL considered dancers interchangeable, and those with the least seniority and power in the teams' hierarchical structure regularly bore the burden of attending, which, in her description, often disproportionately impacted dancers facing additional structural vulnerabilities. Despite their constant, exhausting nature, dancers perform joy and excitement at all these events, aiming to make the wider community also feel these feelings and strengthen fan attachments to the institution.
[4.2] To fulfill expectations in representing their institutions, dancers must often adhere to specific appearance requirements, which can even expand into their daily lives. In my interviews, Former Ladybirds 1–3, who were under Sharp's direction in the late 2000s and 2010s, discussed frequent commenting upon dancers' physical features, sometimes constituting sexual harassment, as coaches, fans, current and former teammates, and others constantly scrutinized their bodies. Similarly, all mentioned, oftentimes unprompted, the time it took to "look like a Ladybird," including when they attended classes or did other activities on UofL's campus solely as students. When asked to describe this further, Former Ladybird 2 said it meant fixing their hair and wearing makeup and Former Ladybird 3 said bluntly, "[looking like] a Barbie." The Lifetime reality television show So Sharp, which featured the team's 2016 season under Sharp, also depicted these norms. In the show, dancer Gabrielle Iannone explicitly states, "Being a Ladybird is my entire life. I've changed my hair, I've changed my look, I've lost some weight to make Ladybirds." Across my interviews and in So Sharp, hair was a recurring topic with racialized registers. On the show, Sharp, a White man, berated White and Black women on the team for what he and former team members perceived as their failures to adhere to "presentable" hair styles within his preferred time frame. Notably these hair styles were largely constrained to White norms in terms of texture and styling, which of course disproportionately impacted Black dancers. However, Former Ladybird 2, who danced under Sharp's leadership, mentioned that she exerted control over her appearance in what was, for her, a repressive environment by cutting her hair within approved styles. Former Ladybirds 1 and 2 also spoke about body size expectations, including being weighed in front of the team wearing only sports bras and spandex shorts. Former Ladybird 2 even told me she seriously considered a breast reduction after coaches, teammates, and fans made ongoing comments about her chest, while Former Ladybird 1 said some teammates sold illegal weight loss pills to other dancers feeling pressured to meet weight requirements.
[4.3] These aesthetic requirements are not unique to the Ladybirds. A Los Angeles Times article on the toxic environment of the University of Southern California Song Girls reports, "Makeup was a must wherever they went—or in whatever content they posted on social media" (Kartje 2021). The exposé similarly discusses constant surveillance of dancers' bodies, especially their weight, and appearance-based harassment, leading to eating disorders for some (Kartje 2021). In our interview, current Ladybirds head coach Knight also spoke about aesthetic expectations for performers as a wider industry standard, describing how restrictions on personal styling choices, like dyeing one's hair, were necessary for the team's success. Yet with fewer institutional resources, these expectations require performers to spend additional time and money to align with the team's aesthetic whether by choice or necessity. Dancers have then often been restricted to implicitly White, fatphobic, and cis heteropatriarchal beauty ideals to even make the Ladybirds team and may not recognize the historical contexts within which these bodily standards emerged (Strings 2019). Likewise, the team has largely legitimated these ideals by rewarding dancers who conform to them with prime positions at games, events, and competitions, as noted by Former Ladybirds 1–3. Their competition wins and institutional circulation as UofL representatives also uphold these standards. Notably, today's team has increased diversity in body size and hair texture, signaling that aesthetic norms may be improving under Knight's leadership, though their social media and in-person appearances still show pristine images of young women with perfect hair and make-up.
[4.4] Beyond this constant scrutiny, Former Ladybird 1 also reported that dancers were occasionally groped by fans during tailgating appearances, and Former Ladybird 2 described being sexually assaulted and harassed in front of UofL cheerleading and dance squads during travel to an out-of-town game, without anyone intervening or supporting her. These experiences with extreme scrutiny, harassment, and even assault emphasize the feminization of dance team practices within a patriarchal society where gendered and sexualized violence is mundane. As a team of almost exclusively cis women (note 6), the Ladybirds' bodies are constantly viewed and even touched in ways that can quickly become nonconsensual. The vulnerable positions and general lack of protections these dancers frequently endure are prevalent beyond dance team settings in many dance practices throughout the United States (Wigenroth 2018). Like its prevalence in dance, sexual violence is endemic to White supremacist patriarchy and has long been mobilized against Black, Indigenous, other people of color, and gender nonconforming people to establish White dominance in the United States (Spillers 1987; Hartman 1997; Razack 2005). Thus, the sexualized violence dance teams are often subjected to connects to their embodiment of Black creative productions, which have historically and contemporarily been made vulnerable to violent White impositions (Hartman 1997). Regardless of positionality, then, dancers can be objectified in ways that are consistent with the objectification of Black performers. Yet, based on positionality, some may only regularly experience this objectification in their institutional roles rather than throughout society broadly, with the ability to capitalize upon "refined," or Whitened, performances of blackness for their advantage. This is not to negate wider gender-based violence or the real harm performers experience or to directly conflate these instances of objectification with the ongoing violence Black people experience due to structural racism. Rather, I aim to emphasize how performing blackness, even in appropriated forms, in a role that extends another person's or institution's capital, like the Ladybirds with UofL, can render dancers vulnerable to forms of sexualized violence historically rooted in antiblackness and capital accumulation.
[4.5] Most performers spoke about these incidents as unfortunate but common experiences that dancers learned to live through. Regarding harassment and other personally challenging moments, Former Ladybird 2 told me "One thing Ladybirds taught me is how to fake it…Just to suppress things and be in the moment because you gotta put on a happy face for the fans. [short pause] For the fans who are berating you and commenting on your body and your face and your hair." Put differently, she would suppress her own affective responses to provide positive experiences for UofL fans even if they were harassing her. Former Ladybird 1 said "Tits up, smiles on" was a repeated refrain during her time on the team, again evidencing the imperative to perform, according to her, as a "sexual object" for fans. These descriptions of emotional regulation, or rather suppression, for the wider fan community recall historic discourses that positioned White women as responsible for the affective regulation of White communities (Schuller 2018). Specifically, racist discourses on hierarchies of feeling purported to describe biological realities in which White people were said to be more "evolved" than racialized peoples through an ability to pause before responding affectively to external stimuli, with cis White women supposedly having the most heightened capacities for feeling (Schuller 2018). While these were White supremacist fallacies, it is notable that dance team performances, in their institutionally appointed fan roles, often require performers of all identities to act according to these affective norms historically prescribed to White women. Specifically, dancers, whose movements center Whitened bodily ideals from visual aesthetics to kinesthetic habits, suppress their own responses to immediate external impositions, like sexual harassment, to perform heightened positive feelings and fulfill institutional imperatives to keep fans happy. While of course dancers and wider university fans are not all White, circulating affect in this way perpetuates and solidifies relational norms that prioritize whiteness and objectify women, while positioning them as affective regulators for their communities.
[4.6] Performers largely bear these burdens without robust support from institutions, which instead profit from their corporeal presentation to deepen fans' affective investments. For example, although UofL promotes the Ladybirds as a "true representation of the excellence that every athlete at the University of Louisville embodies" (Louisville Cardinals n.d.), currently no facilities are dedicated to their training and performance as they are for other sports teams (note 7). Instead, dancers travel to a local studio where Knight teaches to rehearse and prepare for competitions. Even without this support, dancers cultivate goodwill and affective investments in the institution through their performances of positivity and adherence to the team's aesthetic ideals. In doing so, they act as ambassadors for their school, bolstering institutional brands while being consumed by fans as objects of affection—or hate, if they do not meet expectations. As dance teams extract from Black creative productions, then, remaking them in the image of White femininity, institutions capitalize upon their idealized performances, extracting dancers' aesthetic and athletic labor. Within this process, dance teams can reignite cycles of fan appropriation and reperformance. Specifically, beyond corporate franchises discussed in the preceding section, young dancers also often appropriate and embody the movements of elite local performers. In my interviews, all former dancers discussed regularly watching and aiming to perform like older students at their studio or school. In this way, if dancers become successful enough, like making the Ladybirds team, they can become the idealized moving image that is appropriated and reperformed by others, be they young dancers or sports fans. Consequently, these institutionally appointed fan-athletes undoubtedly increase the cultural and financial capital of the institutions they represent by increasing affective attachments to their brand and extending them to future generations.
5. Conclusion
[5.1] I have described how scholastic dance teams could be considered institutionally appointed fan-athletes through their roles in sports settings and beyond. I have discussed how dance team choreographies, as a sort of danced cosplay with or without authentic fan feelings, highlight the performativity of fannish behaviors. Also, to fulfill judging standards, competition choreographies often warp Black popular dances to adhere to European American aesthetics. Through this reliance upon Black creative productions and prioritization of Whitened movement norms, dancers—oftentimes young, cis, White women—are implicated in histories of appropriation and extraction, while gaining social capital through dance teams. Shifting from fan authenticity to consumption and commodification, I then outlined how dance team members are regularly objectified when cheering at sports games and attending events as representatives of their schools. Like competition choreographies, dance team appearances as institutionally appointed fans largely naturalize and promote physical standards and affective norms that adhere to popular discourses and bodily ideals historically constructed in relation to White femininity, from hair textures to compulsions toward toxic positivity. Dancers are publicly scrutinized, and even sexually harassed and assaulted, in ways consistent with both broad gender-based violence and sexual violence endemic to White supremacist social structures. Scholastic institutions, then, rely on dance teams to cultivate and circulate positive affective connections to their athletic brands, which is often accomplished by adhering to harmful, exclusionary, and naturalized racial and gendered norms. Many dance teams therefore continue legacies of appropriation and implicit exclusion that rely upon the fungibility of blackness, while feminizing practices of affective regulation and furthering institutional affective economies.
[5.2] Through the lens of performance, institutionally appointed fan-athletes blur the boundary between affirmational and transformational fandoms in fan studies, much like cosplay and "mimetic fandoms" (Hills 2014). Certainly, the official status and promotional roles of these dance teams and their overwhelming adherence to hegemonic power relations aligns with the prioritization of "sanctioned fans" who stay true to canonical sources within affirmational fandoms (obsession_inc 2009). Yet, the process of dance team practices, which involves learning and repeatedly executing specific movements, can be materially transformative on some level, especially if embodying choreographies subsequently grows dancers' fan attachments. Dance research emphasizes that "no movement can be cued, aligned to, or performed in exactly the same way twice" due to the slipperiness of the body and changing conditions across time and space (Manning 2013, 142). Put differently, dancers must negotiate real-time distinctions in movement execution across repeat performances of the same choreography, like navigating a floor's stickiness, the strain on a tired muscle, timing shifts between other dancers, an antifan's gaze, and more. Further, the repetition of dance training can literally transform the body's form (Dixon Gottschild 2003). Movement performances are then always already remaking the dancer and the dance even at microscales. Alternatively, we might consider how consuming dancers can negatively transform them, as they deal with self-esteem and body issues prompted by severe public scrutiny and harassment. Or we might consider how dance team choreographies refining Black popular dances to Whitened aesthetics are an anti-Black transformational fan practice. Consequently, dance teams regularly act as transformative fan communities whose practices affirm hegemonic power structures, much like male-centric fandoms with transformative practices that align with patriarchy (Jenkins et al. 2013, 150–51).
[5.3] While my research on dance teams has largely emphasized social reproduction, this is not an exhaustive analysis, and the White patriarchal norms I have described can be resisted. For example, Knight also coaches a local high school dance team, Male High School, which was notably different demographically from other teams at the 2023 Kentucky High School Athletic Association Regional Dance Competition. Every other team had very few dancers of color, on average one or two out of fifteen to twenty performers per team, at least according to a phenotypic racial gaze, which has its own problems. Still, noticeably distinct, Black performers constituted about half of Male's team. Their fan base of family and friends were also more engaged than other teams' fans. They began cheering for Male sooner (most teams cheered just before their dancers took the floor), had more formalized cheers, and more playfully interacted with each other during and between cheers. Observing these differences, I reflected on how acafans of color have described the interpretive practices of structurally marginalized fans making contexts catering to majoritarian interests more welcoming (Pande 2018; De Kosnik and carrington 2019). Similarly, Male's fans infused the competition with Black socialities, inherently disrupting the naturalization of White norms within dance team practices and momentarily centering Black cultural practices directly rather than through appropriation. Much more research is needed about communities like Male's within dance team fandoms.
[5.4] The liminality of dance team practices, as fan and athletic activities, highlights how individuals and institutions can flexibly work together or oppositionally to re-entrench or disrupt inequitable social structures. Beyond the demographics of teams and fans, it is possible for dance team performances to challenge current norms reifying whiteness and cis heteronormativity through aesthetic priorities, movement choices, and affective relations promoted in pedagogies, choreographies, and appearance events. In any case, attending to institutionally appointed fan-athletes, and specifically dance teams, turns scholarly attention to those often overlooked, as in regularly looked at yet rarely studied in mainstream and academic discourses. Examining these practices instead offers greater understanding and possibilities for challenging integral supporting roles within the ongoing workings of empire in the cultural sphere. As scholars, fans, athletes, and/or dancers, may we then learn to look, and indeed to move, differently.