ABSTRACT
Leading Ladies retains the generic conventions of the traditional ballroom dancing story while re-working the nature of the female ballroom dancer and the ballroom dance couple. This chapter argues that viewers, particularly young adult female viewers, will have an engaged response to the embodied performances on screen, and that these responses will enable them to align themselves closely with the cheerleader and dancer characters who are also lesbian. It focuses on two sisters, their mother, their gay best friend, and the changing family dynamics when one sister becomes pregnant with twins and the other sister announces that she is lesbian. The adolescent lesbian romance is a central part of the television narrative over a period of seven years. Viewers who cheerlead or dance are likely to have particularly active mirror neuron responses to on-screen performances, but all viewers can pre-reflexively and automatically understand and emotionally connect with Santana and her enactment of the lesbian cheerleader and dancer.
