Like many other Australian children, specifically those assigned female at birth, I spent a good majority of my formative years in after-school dance classes. What began with my childhood admiration of pretty ballerinas spinning on their toes in tulle and bejewelled elastane, led to tiny tots classes in baby blue leotards and wrap-around chiffon.

As these carefree affairs transformed into troupe auditions and eisteddfods, memorising French for ballet exams, commuting from school to the studio, and from slippers to pointes, the dance studio’s appeal notably dimmed. 

The glittered reflection of sequined costumes that had captured the interest of five-year-old me was ultimately tainted by the studio’s grey LEDs casting a shadow over my senior years.

Dance is a sensory practice. We teach our body to recognise correct movements and movement patterns through engaging in them over and over again until they become autonomous.

In this way, we don’t have to think about whether we are performing something correctly – we develop a kinaesthetic awareness of correct and incorrect performance that becomes subconscious. 

So, what happens when the ‘correct movements’ that we come to internalise are all oriented towards heteronormativity? When we as children receive constant praise from performing heterosexual movements and narratives, are we disciplining our bodies and senses into an autonomous heterosexuality?

I spent 13 years in dance: from the time I was five years old to graduating from junior school at 18. The love I hold for dance is immense. It is an art form and a sport. A form of embodied knowledge and mechanism for communication. It is sensing and responding. 

But these definitions that I have come to associate with dance have been the result of deconstructing the lessons learnt throughout all those years of recreational classes. A lot of this came from coming to terms with my queerness, an identity which, coincidentally, first emerged through dance (I had a crush on a dance friend which I didn’t understand to be a crush until much later).

As much as I loved to dance, I have to distinguish the act from the environment. The stereotypes of dance being a space that complicates people’s relationship with their bodies and confidence are often true. For me, however, the dance environment naturalised a different social more: it normalised heterosexuality.

Post queer-awakening, I have spent many cyclical hours wondering, to no clear answer, how and why I didn’t notice my queerness until my early twenties. 

These periods of re-analysing an entire life were often accompanied by my university social science lectures, in which I was exposed to new ideas of social and gender theory. The work of Judith Butler was personally revolutionary, and has guided my understanding of self today.

Butler’s idea of gender performativity is often considered foundational to modern understandings of gender. Butler holds that individuals “do” gender, rather than “are” a specific gender.

Gender is not innate, it is something we learn to “perform” correctly, often as children. We take cues from our social and cultural worlds and what they regard to be “correct” gendered behaviours. These actions are often not grand gestures of femininity and masculinity, but are instead discrete, everyday acts which come to be autonomous.

The recreational dance space in Australia is heavily steeped in traditional gender roles. Dance is divided in almost every way by gender. With the costumes, we see skirts and dresses for girls and pants for boys. In the choreography, boys are encouraged to hit hard moves, while girls aspire for oozing softness. And partner work almost always aims to pair boy with girl. 

I cannot tell you how many times the single boy in a class was positioned as the macho love interest around which we, as girls, were made to enact romantic themes, moves and storylines. If we take Butler’s work to be accurate, then the dance studio is one of the most dominant sites where young Australians learn to “do” gender. A gender that is largely cis-heteronormative.

For me, these dance sessions have now come to represent a form of social discipline. We were often told how to act, and to whom these actions were directed.

In one class as a teenager, I remember having our teacher tell us to imagine our crush was sitting at the front of the room, and that our aim was to impress him by dancing. We were dancing to a song from Fifty Shades of Grey, and our choreography included us moving through various sensual positions. And it worked. Our teacher praised us for our improved performance.

This was just one situation in which we as children were made to, without pushback or dissent, enact mature heterosexual fantasies, and praised for it. But as I’ve worked to deconstruct, analyse, and reconstruct myself as a young adult, I question whether all those years of performing heterosexuality have influenced my identity on a deeper level.

Did receiving praise for embodying normative gender roles and heterosexual behaviours manifest into a false heterosexual identification, which was so ingrained in me it almost went unnoticed? And if this is the case, does mainstream dance culture – which many young Australians are involved with – promote or expect compulsory heterosexuality of its participants? 

I know that dance is one of many other social factors playing a part in identity construction, rather than being the sole force. These days, I am content to consider the multitude of ways dance has impacted me as a person, both for the better and for the more complicated. 

While my experiences in the childhood recreational dance industry may have been a camp reenactment of boy meets girl, only with more sequins and hairspray, I am hoping that children’s dance can embrace a form of neutrality upon which movement, sensing and growth can be prioritised.

Dance holds so much potential for shaping the connection young people have with their bodies, and that should occur in an environment where children feel safe to express themselves, rather than be made to enact tired storylines.

After all, dance is a space for expression, and expression belongs to everyone: cis, het, queer and beyond.