ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that social partner dance demands a dedicated holistic analytical theory, given its coherence across forms as a social practice, its global spread and ideological power, and the inability of existing stage-oriented dance theory to parse its nuances. The chapter opens with a case study of Brazilian zouk, meant to reveal the necessity of approaching partner dance simultaneously as a culturally meaningful social process and as a physical system, each angle offering critical vantage points on the other. While there are undoubtedly pitfalls associated with attempting a unified theory of partner dance, this chapter makes the case that the benefits outweigh the problems. The underlying premise is that all lead/follow partner dances are historically related, if sometimes distantly. Many dancers today also already see their specific practices as being of a kind with other lead/follow forms. The pedagogical processes by which different dances become formalized also tend to be similar from one dance form to the next, and therefore too have a homogenizing effect. The chapter concludes with an argument that because the act of partner dancing operates as a complex process of socialization, the study of that process in all its intricacies is both worthwhile and necessary.
