- Target group: Dance audience/public
- Purpose: To educate the general public about the physical and mental challenges dancers face in order to fit into body standards, to challenge audience stereotypes of dancers’ body aesthetics, and to test their acceptance of muscular, more healthy-bodied (as opposed to slender and slim) dancers.
- Conclusion:
Step 1———Workshop scenarios
- Participants were asked to vote based on two sets of photos before entering, one of a slimmer dancer and one of a more muscular dancer, as a way to test participants’ default image of the dancer, as well as their personal preferences
- The workshop will be divided into four parts, including documentary film viewing, the physical challenges dancers face in order to meet body image standards, psychological challenges and whether the Chinese dance industry provides professional support at this stage, disclosing the extreme body image requirements and the lack of professional support in the Chinese dance industry at this stage from various aspects.
- Discussions and comments: Participants will use post-it notes to write down their immediate thoughts during the tour, and everyone will be able to talk to each other while completing a questionnaire at the end of the tour.
- After completing the tour, participants will be asked to vote again on their preference for the two groups of dancers, as a comparison to enhance the audience’s understanding of the dancers’ body standards and the extent to which they are able to change the audience’s aesthetic preferences.
Step 2———Workshop Space and Material Design
Step 3———Workshop Conducted
Step 4 ——Enlisting the views and aesthetic preferences of a wider audience
I have a dance account with 13.8k followers on my platform in China, which gathers a large audience of dance audiences, and I posted polls about it, hoping to gather more information about the audience’s aesthetic preferences and acceptance of ballet figures.
As of 19 November, there were 20 participants, 80 per cent of whom voted for a more muscular ballet dancer, while 20 per cent chose a slimmer, bony ballet dancer.
Possible error:
- the account audience group is generally knowledgeable and aware of ballet.
- the number of participants was small and the length of the posting was short, there is a data bias.
- information cocoon, big data will be biased to push such content to more groups thinking about dancer body standards.
Conclusions:
INTERVENTION WITH AUDIENCE: Participants, who were generally less aware of ballet, showed a significant increase in acceptance of the muscular ballet dancer’s body after participating in the workshop.
Investigation of audience what: Participants were generally ballet-interested enthusiasts with some knowledge of ballet, who naturally preferred muscular, well-proportioned dancers to slim, bony dancers.
It can be concluded that raising the participants’ awareness can help them develop a correct aesthetic. Conscious participants had less stereotypical ballet body image.
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