ABSTRACT
Surfing, the act of standing upright on a board and guiding it across the face of a breaking wave, is a form of dance in which the board rider, or surfer, ‘dances’ to and with a natural energy form.
(Booth 2003: 315-336)
The surfer’s body is very much an absent presence (Leder 1990; Shilling 2003) in surfing culture, as with the quote above it is always there, but rarely made explicit. So long as they are functioning as they should, surfers’ bodies normally remain absent, although on the occasions that they do go wrong they, like most performing bodies ‘dys-appear’ (Leder 1990), in that the ‘mal-functioning’ body becomes obvious through its own presence. However, in order to understand the social significance of the body in surfing there is a need to make the body visible and place it centre stage. This begins with descriptions of the qualities of the surfing body. Surfers’ bodies are typically able-bodied, mesomorphic, especially those of competitive surfers (Lowdon 1980), they are lithe, almost catlike in their flexibility, and enact high levels of skill that are demonstrated through the rapid application of pre-learned moves to new ‘open’ skill situations. Surfers’ bodies tend to work best off a low centre of gravity, with gymnast-like body dynamics that are enhanced by low levels of body fat and high levels of body strength to weight ratio, energy and stamina in the water. Surfing bodies are aquatic bodies, they must swim and dive well using oxygen efficiently when underwater. They must they feel at home in the water, in fact they must love the water. Above all, surfing bodies must be creative performing bodies that continually assemble dance-like patterns of movement across a wave. However, these bodies only depict a small fraction of the bodies that surf and are surfed. While many other body types may in reality more accurately reflect the fuller spectrum of bodies that actually surf, the qualities of the bodies articulated above form the basis of the idealized conception of the competent surfer, be they competitive, soul, or one of the many other stylized types of surfing bodies that are constantly being created since surfing was resuscitated by Western practitioners at the turn of the last century.
