Sport, Art… or Agon?

Rethinking an old question about competitive Ballroom and Latin American dancing

A social media post about sculpture being part of the Olympic Games sent me down an unexpected rabbit hole.

Sculpture? In the Olympics?

And me being me, of course I had to check.

But it was true. From 1912 until 1948, the modern Olympic Games included competitions in architecture, literature, music, painting and sculpture.¹

That immediately made me curious.

Why had activities we would now readily associate with the arts once been placed into competition within the Olympic movement? And what, if anything, might that tell us about the way we think about competition today?

As often happens when I start pulling at one thread, another appeared.

I started thinking about dance.

Following the Olympic art story further led me to an ancient Greek word that made me look at competition rather differently.

Agon.

WHAT IS AGON?

The ancient Greek word agōn referred broadly to contest, competitive striving or a gathering for competition.

What interested me was not simply that the ancient Greeks competed in activities other than athletics. We still do today.

Ballet has competitions. So do contemporary dance, jazz, hip-hop and many other forms of dance. Musicians compete. Singers compete. Artistic and performative activities continue to be judged in competition today.

So the interesting point is not that agon belongs to a lost world.

It is that the idea makes something visible that our modern categories can sometimes obscure:

Competition is not exclusive to sport. And we know this.

And I came across something else too. There is very early evidence of dance being placed into contest in ancient Greece. The Dipylon oinochoe, dating from around 740–730 BC, carries an inscription associated with a prize for dancing.²

That does not mean dance was an event at the ancient Olympic Games. It was not.³

Nor does it mean that agon gives competitive Ballroom and Latin American dancing a new category into which it should now be placed.

Perhaps its value is simpler.

A musician entering a competition remains a musician.

A ballet dancer entering a competition remains a ballet dancer.

A Ballroom/Latin American dancer entering a Ballroom and Latin American competition remains a Ballroom/Latin American dancer.

WHAT DOES “COMPETITIVE DANCING” ACTUALLY TELL US?

Perhaps our own familiar dance language already describes this rather well:

Competitive dancing.

The dancing tells us what we are doing. Competitive tells us something about the conditions in which we are doing it.

Once dancers enter a competition, those conditions change.

There are rules. Other competitors share the floor. Adjudicators make comparative judgements. The music is not chosen by the dancers. Space has to be negotiated. The dancers have to perform under pressure and within the particular conditions of that competition.

And what is being brought into that contest?

Physical ability, certainly.

Technique.

Coordination.

Musical understanding.

Partnership.

Character.

Presentation.

Interpretation.

Creativity.

Experience.

And perhaps other qualities that are much harder to separate or name, but which experienced dancers, teachers and adjudicators nevertheless recognise when they see them.

Competition gives us a structure through which dancers can be compared and a result can be produced.

But it also does something else. It creates a system in which some qualities, choices and performances are repeatedly rewarded.

WHAT DOES COMPETITION ENCOURAGE US TO VALUE?

Competition does more than produce a result.

Over time, it can influence what dancers, teachers and adjudicators come to recognise as valuable or successful.

That does not mean competition is the only force shaping Ballroom and Latin American dancing. Music, culture, fashion, individual innovators, teaching traditions, technical development, physical training and many other influences all play a part.

But competition creates its own pressures.

What succeeds is noticed. What is rewarded is more likely to be repeated. Successful dancers influence other dancers. Teachers study what is working.

Ideas spread through teaching, competitions, demonstrations, travel, training camps and, increasingly, digital and social media.

Some developments disappear again. Others become familiar enough that they eventually form part of the accepted competitive language.

So a competition isn't only: Who danced best today?

It can also contribute, gradually and collectively, to another question:

What do we currently understand excellence in competitive dancing to mean?

That makes the structure of competition important.

The rules matter. Are they clear and fair? Are they applied consistently? Are they reviewed as knowledge, circumstances and the needs of dancers develop? And when they are changed, are the foreseeable consequences considered carefully enough before those changes are introduced?

What adjudicators are encouraged to notice matters.

The conditions under which dancers compete matter.

The qualities that repeatedly succeed matter.

Not because any one rule or result determines the future of the dance, but because repeated competitive choices can contribute to its development over time.

Perhaps, then, the question for any competitive dance system is not only: Who are we rewarding?

But also: What are we rewarding, and what might that encourage dancers to develop?

SO WHERE DO SPORT AND ART COME INTO THIS?

If competition itself does not provide a complete definition of the dancing, perhaps the familiar question of sport or art can be approached differently.

A sporting perspective can draw attention to things such as training demands, physical preparation, competition structures, fairness, performance under pressure and the responsibilities that come with organised competition.

An artistic perspective can draw attention to musical interpretation, expression, style, aesthetic judgement, creativity, performance quality and the development of an individual dancer.

But neither list belongs exclusively to one world.

Dance already has its own sophisticated knowledge of the body, training, injury prevention, performance and wellbeing.

Sport can contain artistry.

Art can require extraordinary physical discipline.

Both can involve rules, judgement, training, tradition and competition.

So perhaps the value lies less in deciding where these qualities belong and more in considering what each perspective can contribute to our understanding.

There may be times when sport provides useful knowledge or structures.

There may be times when artistic approaches offer useful ways of understanding interpretation, expression or performance.

And there will be times when the knowledge already held within dance itself is the most relevant starting point.

Competitive Ballroom and Latin American dancing may benefit from drawing on more than one tradition without expecting any one of them to explain competitive dancing in its entirety.

That possibility seems more useful to me than assuming we have to choose one way of understanding competitive dancing over another.

THE PRACTICAL QUESTIONS ARE DIFFERENT AGAIN

But how we understand competitive dancing and how it is recognised or supported institutionally are not quite the same question.

Competitive Ballroom and Latin American dancing is organised internationally and nationally through a range of bodies, systems and traditions. These do not all describe or organise competitive dancing in exactly the same way.

Those differences are real and felt in our dance community.

But questions of identity are not the only questions that matter.

Recognition matters.

Funding matters.

Representation matters.

Governance matters.

Different organisations may have very real reasons for seeking recognition within particular systems, including sport, and those reasons may have practical consequences for dancers, teachers, organisers and competitions.

At the same time, dance already receives support through routes beyond sport, including arts, culture, education, heritage, community and other forms of public or charitable provision.⁴

So perhaps a useful question is not simply: Which category gives us access to support?

But also: What support is actually needed, for what purpose, and which route is most appropriate for that need?

Sporting recognition may be important for some purposes.

Arts or cultural support may be relevant for others.

Education, heritage, health or community structures may offer something different again.

The practical challenge may then be less about finding one institutional identity that answers every need, and more about identifying the need clearly enough to ask which knowledge, structures or forms of support are best suited to it.

That does not require different organisations to become the same.

Nor does it require everyone involved in competitive Ballroom and Latin American dancing to agree on one complete definition before useful questions can be asked.

Some questions concern the dancing and the dancers before they concern affiliation.

SO WHAT DOES AGON ACTUALLY GIVE US?

I started with a slightly strange historical fact about sculpture in the Olympic Games and wondered whether agon might offer competitive Ballroom and Latin American dancing another box or label.

I don’t think it does.

And I am not sure we need another one.

What agon gave me instead was a way of separating competition from sport.

Competitive Ballroom and Latin American dancing can be organised as competition without competition alone having to provide its complete definition.

That leaves room for two different questions. Yes, I have a lot of questions, I know!

What do we want competition to encourage dancers to develop?

And: What knowledge, structures and forms of support does competitive Ballroom and Latin American dancing actually need?

The answer to those questions may sometimes come from sport.

Sometimes from the arts.

Sometimes from education, health, heritage or dance itself.

Sometimes from more than one place.

And perhaps that is the point.

REFERENCES

1. Olympic Studies Centre, historical material on the Olympic art competitions. The modern Olympic Games included official competitions in architecture, literature, music, painting and sculpture from Stockholm 1912 through London 1948.

2. Cullhed, Eric (2021), “The Dipylon Oinochoē and Ancient Greek Dance Aesthetics,” The Classical Quarterly, 71(1), pp. 22–33. DOI: 10.1017/S000983882100046X.

3. Olympic Studies Centre, historical material on the programme of the ancient Olympic Games at Olympia, including running events, pentathlon, wrestling, boxing, pankration and equestrian events.

4. UK public support for dance can be found through a range of routes beyond sport. Relevant examples include Arts Council England, Arts Council of Wales, Creative Scotland, Arts Council of Northern Ireland, the National Lottery Heritage Fund and the Department for Education’s Dance and Drama Awards.