Work as dance

Abstract

This article argues that use of the dance analogy has potential as an heuristic device in ethnographies of work. The nature and variety of dance is explored as a way of studying movement, gendered embodiment, audience, emotion and rhythm at work. It can thus serve to provide a richly multi-dimensional view of work, while also having the potential to draw attention to the unfolding of patterns of work over time. While such an approach has much in common with classic studies of work, as well as some more recent work that emphasizes work as embodied practice, it may also open up new avenues or at least unsettle some of the dominant ways of researching work and its organization. As such it is offered as a stimulus to debate on the nature of work and its organization and how it might be undertood. There are, however, limitations to the dance analogy and these mean that the approach might be best seen as a useful complement to approaches which focus on the verbal, rather than sufficient in itself.

Where would it take us if we saw work as dance? While the answer to this no doubt depends on many contingencies, not least those of deciding which dance, whose dance and what we see as dance, in this article I seek to persuade even sceptical readers that seeing work as dance does provide a way of thinking about work that draws our attention to a range of important issues and their interconnections. At the same time, however, any analogy has its limitations and I want to explore these, too.

To see work as dance can be seen as part of a growing concern with the visual and with the body, including the body at work (e.g. Banks, 2001; Davis, 1997; Hassard et al., 2000; Hockey and Allen-Collinson, 2009; Pettinger, 2005; Rose, 2001; Tyler and Abbott, 1998; Witz et al., 2003; Wolkowitz, 2006); it is most definitely to be seen as part of a commitment to an ethnographic approach (Willis, 2000). If Willis came ‘to treat living experience and its immediate practices and symbolic materials as a poem’ (Willis, 2000: 9) perhaps we can also treat it as a dance. This might serve to bring out the non-verbal aspects of everyday cultural forms in which it is the interplay of human bodies in their physical and social context that needs to be understood. This might be seen to have some similarities with the use of jazz as a heuristic in organization studies (Hatch, 1998; Humphreys et al., 2003), but while the jazz analogy emphasizes the aural here I want to emphasize the visual and the kinetic. Both, however, help us to see parallels between work and other social endeavours, encouraging a move beyond narrow sub-disciplinary boundaries in search of new insights and understandings.

I am not the first to argue for the relevance of dance to those interested in understanding contemporary work and organizational life. Slutskaya and Schreven (2007) provide one recent example of the use of the analysis of dance to explore issues of identity, relevant to the workplace, but few seem to have taken this lead. There have, of course, been a number of studies that have focused on dance as a form of work (e.g. Aalten, 1996; Calabria, 1993; Cordon, 1983; Felstead et al., 2007; Martin, 1987, 1994) and I have made some use of these here, but this is not the only way in which we might link dance and work. Here I argue that systematic use of the dance analogy draws attention to features often relatively neglected in studies of work. Moreover, it serves to bring about the inter-relationships between aspects of work often treated separately: those between work as embodied practice and its setting, audience and designer. It also serves to integrate aspects of movement, appearance and emotion in ways that builds on but adds some new dimensions to recent work on the aesthetics of labour (e.g. Witz et al., 2003). This use of the dance analogy was prompted partly by a feeling that studies of work were often rather disembodied, or else, if they did recognize the body as of central importance, tended to focus on its appearance rather than its movement in relation to others and to the setting in which it took place. Moreover, as we shall see, to view work as dance might not be to see it only as it currently appears, but to see it as a culturally and historically fluid practice, changing over time.

The structure of this article is as follows. First I deal with the question of what we might mean by the term ‘dance’, then briefly explore four forms of dance and the issues they raise for the analysis of work. I go on to draw out some common issues raised by the dance analogy, and what it might offer to studies of work in general, before considering some limitations and drawing some conclusions.

What is dance?

Dance takes many forms in different cultures but what they have in common is a body in rhythmic movement, usually to the accompaniment of music. Dance is primarily a non-verbal idiom (Lange, 1983: 108) but this does not, of course, mean that it cannot be read like a text, or have meaning—to the ancient Greeks, for example, dances often had specific religious meanings (Lawler, 1964: 13). There are, of course, dances (such as some flamenco) where the song and the dance do have a very intimate connection, but many dances are not accompanied by words. Such variability in the form dance takes also extends to other characteristics: it may or may not involve the interaction of more than one body, be a skilled accomplishment, or involve an audience; it can be considered high art sometimes playing to tiny audiences, or a part of popular culture involving millions. It can take place in bedrooms, open spaces, theatres, clubs, or on film or television. It can be anywhere but not usually, in modern Westernized cultures at least, in the workplace—unless we count the dancers’ workplace.

If we often associate dance with youthfulness, athleticism and able-bodiedness, none of this is essential. In the history of the flamenco we can see what was once a dance performed by men and women of many different ages, bodily shapes and range of movement, gradually becoming associated more and more with the lithe and young (Washabaugh, 1994). Moreover the concept of what constitutes ‘able-bodiedness’ is itself contestable, with a recent BBC television series ‘Dancing on Wheels’ providing ample evidence of the athleticism and ability of dancers in wheelchairs.

If dance involves the body, and is a muscular display, it is also relevant to emphasize that dance has a capacity to evoke emotion in the audience and in the dancer. This is no doubt partly its appeal as an art form—it is capable of expressing and evoking a wide range human emotion, in varying degrees of intensity, as well as having the capacity to promote reflection on such emotions.

We can readily see, then, how dance might be socially, culturally and historically variable. Such variability might initially be demonstrated through reference to four types of dance.

Some types of dance

If dance can take many forms here I discuss four in order to make some critical points about what the ‘work as dance’ analogy might sensitize the observer to, when analysing work. These are chosen to provide a contrast between more or less ‘choreographed’ forms, and between what might be seen as more or less formal styles. Each suggests different points that might be useful in analysing work. Of course different choices of dance might raise different points and choosing dances from a wider range of cultures might provide richer insights; I am acutely conscious that dance can be an expression of cultural identity but also provide opportunities for resistance and hybridization, as Sharma, Hutnyk and Sharma (1996) illustrate. Nevertheless, I have chosen examples of dance with which I am familiar, and with which I imagine most readers will be familiar, in the belief that these four examples might serve to show the potential of using the dance analogy. Three of these forms are European in origin, while one of them is South American, although later taken up in Europe.

The minuet

The minuet was increasingly popular in the 1600s in Europe and remained the most popular ballroom dance until the end of the 18th century (Hilton, 2004). As a dance it was associated with well-off sections of society and was a formalized, stylized dance, involving a strict sequence of moves involving (usually) pairs of men and women. The dance is relatively slow in 3/4 time, generally to the accompaniment of stringed instruments. It involves some holding of hands, coming together and drifting apart in circular and z-shaped movements across the dance floor. Minuets are typically of only a few minutes duration, facilitating changing of partners as well as, perhaps, reducing the opportunity for intimacy.

The minuet incorporates heterosexual sociality where one person’s movements echo and mirror that of their partner. Such dancing was, of course, an opportunity for heterosexual pairing, possibly leading to marriage. It was also highly gendered with men taking the more active, dominant role. All was highly formalized, controlled, predictable, graceful and refined (or at least such was the ideal). If the dancers were fully engaged in the dance it also seems to have been a performance in which the audience was significant, even if this was made up of other dancers or those not (yet) dancing. It was an occasion that could be used to display one’s clothes (often elaborate) and hence one’s ‘taste’ and wealth, as well as one’s general physique and appearance. Dances were opportunities to display one’s own acquisition of ‘culture’. Thus Hilton (2004: 431) quotes a passage from a letter Lord Chesterfield (1694–1773) wrote to his son:

As you will be often under the necessity of dancing a minuet I would you danced it very well. Remember that the graceful motion of the arms, the giving of your hand, and the putting on and pulling off of your hat genteelly are the material parts of a gentleman’s dancing. But the greatest advantage of dancing well is that it necessarily teaches you to present yourself, to sit, stand and walk genteelly; all of which are of real importance to a man of fashion.

While such dancing might now seem only of historical interest it does, I think, point to issues highly relevant to the study of contemporary work. This includes attending to the form of movement in space (whether z-shaped or not) and the rhythm to which the movement is synchronized. Also significant is the degree of formality as well as the style of performance, as a display designed to affect an audience. We might ask, then: to what extent is any particular form of work like a minuet? How rhythmical is it and are the dancer’s moves formal and scripted? How are gender relations performed? What is the audience and how does it appraise the performance?

Perhaps the study of the practices of anaesthesia by Hindmarsh and Pilnick (2007: 1404) provides one example of something that comes close to this, with them noting, in the interaction between the anaesthetist and the operating department assistant (ODA), ‘the delicacy with which the two colleagues coordinate their activities. For example, despite the lack of talk, they smoothly and unproblematically exchange both the laryngoscope and the tracheal tube and coordinate their conduct such that the patient is quickly intubated’. However, seeing such work in the light of the minuet suggests some ways in which their analysis can be extended beyond an appreciation of the complex interlays of bodily movements—towards the gendered order (in which anaesthetists are more commonly men and ODAs women) and towards the public display of competence (see Sinclair, 2005) in which the audience’s view may be significant, with the audience in this case being co-workers. In many cases audiences might, of course, be multiple with managers, co-workers and customers all perhaps having different viewpoints.

Another example of work that comes close to that which use of such a dance analogy would encourage is Witz and colleagues’ (2003) account of hotel workers in an up-market hotel chain in which employees become part of the image that the hotel is attempting to create. This involves stylized performance and appearance so the staff come to be ‘aesthetic labourers’ who complement the décor, performing their labour within spaces that are designed to convey a particular style. What the dance analogy might add, however, is greater attention to the gendered aspects of this, and to the specific movements involved for, despite the athors’ emphasis on the embodied nature of aesthetic labour, Witz et al (2003) focus largely on appearance, rather than the labourer’s movements within the stylized stages on which they perform. Similarly, Tyler and Abbott’s (1998) work on flight attendants largely focuses on the way in which bodily appearance is managed, involving, for example, frequent weight checks for female flight attendants (and only female flight attendants). While this does foreground the gendered aspect of aesthetic labour, there is only a passing mention of how companies work to choreograph the lived-body aspect of the relationship with the customer, where they make use of Betterton’s (1996) concept of ‘intimate distance’ (see Tyler and Abbott 1998: 446). Similar limitations apply to Petttinger’s (2005) study of gendered aesthetic labour in a retail context.

The tango

The tango is a dance that involves movement, passion, sexuality and power (Azzi, 2004). It involves not just frequent change of position, but also of direction and pace. The movements range from quick to slow, with sudden stops; dancers sometimes in a close embrace, sometimes flung apart. As Savigliano (1995) puts it the tango, however, is a dance not of two people but of three, with the audience the third actor. That is, the dance is not just a private matter between two participants, however much it might appear to be a private all-consuming passion. It is also a dance that displays one’s passion, movement and capacity for coordination to the audience.

The tango can also be seen as a vehicle for the operation of gender politics, postcolonial power plays, race and class. If we are all familiar with the tango we are perhaps not so aware of its differences in form and content—geographically and historically. It seems to have had its origins among black men and women in the Rio de la Plata area of Argentina and provided a display of eroticism that scandalized their masters and exploiters, according to Savigliano (1995: 30). But the wealthy nevertheless came to appropriate it as a dance form over time. The transformation of the dance from its lowly origins to a highly stylized form of ball-room dancing, popular in Europe and elsewhere, involved a long and complex journey in which race, class and gender politics were implicated. Without summarizing this journey here we might note that this suggests how dances may undergo modification and change while still remaining recognizably the ‘same’ dance with its interplay of movement and emotion, of power, and also of audience.

Applied to work, as a model, this raises issues about the relations of power and acquiescence, distance and intimacy, as well as of changes of direction and speed. An example from the study of work that comes close to this is Flores-Pereira and colleagues’ (2008) study which involves observation of after work drinking by employees of a book store. This portrays radical shifts in mood and relations, from extremes of anger, irritation and finger-pointing, to laughter, hugs and kisses and euphoria, all tied to shifting relations of power and authority among participants.

The case of the tango also suggests that we might study work not just in the lived embodied moment of the dance, but in historical context. This would result in the study of how particular forms of work evolve and change over time, and what the patterns of exclusion and inclusion might be. This sort of study is not new to the sociology of work, of course, and Cockburn’s (1983) study of printers might be seen as a good example of how an historical view of the development of work practices over time might illuminate key gendered political processes. To use the dance analogy, however, suggests that we might either choose to focus on the dance as it is or the dance as it evolves as a fluid cultural practice or set of practices. In doing so the tango, in particular, suggests we might keep the manner and degree of regulation of emotions, passions and desire to the fore.

Ballet

If, in the minuet and the tango, we have examples of dance forms that have entered popular culture and are regularly performed by those who would not define themselves primarily as dancers, in the ballet we have an example of dance as high art. While many children do learn ballet, its performance at a high level tends to be the preserve of an elite few. This is partly due to the flexibility required of the body, something that, for adults, only a large amount of practice and exercise can make possible. In this the ballet can be likened to a craft, in the way in which Sennett (2008) has discussed this, with practice producing a degree of bodily co-ordination which is not easily accomplished. To make a few minutes of sublime movement takes hours of hard work and pain, often under conditions of strict control and subservience in practice rooms (Belair, 1993; Buckroyd, 2000). Indeed a notable feature of ballet is that there is a contrast between the on-stage and off-stage region—something not emphasized in Sennett’s (2008) description of the craft workshop.

Cordon’s (1983) study of ballet dancers attending the elite School of American Ballet in New York, as well as other professional ballet dancers, is a revealing portrayal of the working lives of ballet dancers and those aspiring to such roles. This not just a world of physically demanding training for long hours, it is also highly competitive. Few succeed at a high level, and the competition often carries a heavy toll of pain and injury. The work requires a physical moulding of the body with early training essential ‘if a dancer’s bones are to be malleable enough to allow the femur bone in the thigh to actually twist in its socket’ (Cordon 1983: 35). As Aaalten (1997: 48) puts it, ballet dancers are required to ‘sculpt their bodies into a cultural form’. This preoccupation with physical appearance sometimes carries a considerable cost, such as eating disorders (Buckroyd, 2000). At a more mundane level constipation becomes the ballet dancers ‘primary occupational hazard’ (Belair, 1993: 66).

Ballet as a dance form is highly choreographed and in this it forms a contrast with the tango and minuet, for the choreographer is often a living presence in the lives of the dancer, dictating the steps and the manner of their execution. Of course ballet dancers may have varying degrees of ability to interpret the instructions of choreographers and some become choreographers, or work collaboratively with choreographers (Gelsey Kirkland was an example of the latter—see Kirkland and Lawrence, 1986). This suggests a need to examine the relationship between dancer and the choreographer and the degree to which the dancer is able to make the creative decisions. It encourages a concern with who decides what the performance shall be. This is something explored in Felstead and colleagues’ (2007) study of aerobic instructors, where a contrast is drawn between aerobics instructors who are trained to work with commercially produced ‘pre-choreographed’ exercise programmes (complete with music) while others follow a ‘freestyle’ route, requiring them to exercise discretion and skill in the choice of music and patterns of movement.

To use ballet as a way of thinking about work, then, is to encourage a return to something Goffman (1990: 109–140) emphasized: the consideration of both back regions and front regions as imposing different requirements and eliciting different behaviours. It also focuses attention on the ‘who’ of work design, and on the physical effects of work, in what Witz et al. (2003: 34) have referred to as ‘stylized workplace performances’, where how one carries oneself, how one is groomed and shaped, are all highly nuanced and intended to produce a certain effect. It is not, of course, novel to focus on any of these elements, but the use of the ballet analogy might be a useful heuristic, encouraging the investigator to consider all of them and their interconnections.

The rave

Raves were a popular phenomenon in the early 1990s with events often attracting thousands of people (Ward, 1997). Dancing was a central part of the rave experience, with dancers moving to highly repetitive electronic music with a strong beat and, unlike much popular music, of relatively long duration. As Ward puts it (1997: 62):

By alternating sequences of rhythmic intensity which build towards a climax which is never fully reached, with breaks into chilling electronic ambient, the rushes and ebbs of orgasm are reproduced. Indeed this rhythmic manipulation and the judicious juxtaposition of different musical textures is at the heart of shamanistic techniques of ecstasy which aim to create a dance/music terrain favourable to the induction of trance.

In this situation dancers rarely had much space for elaborate routines and moves—rather they were crushed together, moving in unison to the beat. Raves were commonly associated with use of the drug ecstasy, although some of those involved claimed that the trance like state often associated with raves was not dependent on the drug; rather the dancing and the music in combination seemed to be enough to create ‘a loss of self to a wider communal body’ (Pini, 1997: 120) and an intense emotional experience that was both relaxed and ‘hyper aware’. Such accounts suggest a difference between the rave and the apparently more self-conscious and highly gendered experience of the minuet. This does not seem to be a dancing experience where heterosexual sociality and bonding is to the fore—rather ‘along with the blurring of individual boundaries, sexual boundaries are also blurred’ (Pini, 1997: 122).

For the study of work this kind of dance suggests a number of possibilities. One is that movements may not be highly scripted, elaborate or individualized. Rather than individuals being the focus it makes sense to focus on the movement of a mass, to the beat of the machine. However, the emotional side of this is important, too—the mass may come to feel they are moving in common. There is a we-ness and an emotionally charged atmosphere. If this might be taken as a pleasurable experience or even a quasi-spiritual one, it might also remind us of Adorno’s comments on an older and faster form of popular dance—the jitterbug (Adorno, 2002: 308–309 and 465–468). Adorno, of course, saw all popular music and its related dances as the expression of a commercialized and alienating culture. To him dancing to such music was not an escape from social powers but another expression of them. He was intensely critical of what he saw as something that renders humans infantile and deprived of autonomous will (Adorno, 2002: 465). At the same time he recognized the ambivalence of such human involvement in which ‘To become transformed into an insect [the jitterbug], man needs that energy which might possibly achieve his transformation into a man’ (Adorno, 2002: 468). Such appreciation of the ambivalences of dance might be a feature of the use of dance as an heuristic. It need not attend solely to surface appearances, but has the potential to promote a more complex and nuanced consideration of the politics and aesthetics of work.

This brief consideration of a rather different form of dance, one apparently more spontaneous than that of the previous forms considered, if applied to work, could be seen as suggesting a range of possibilities. Work might be more or less choreographed, individualized, trance-like, emotional and gendered. Although wherever work lies on such continua, it might still be a more or less alienated form of labour.

Common features of dance

If we have emphasized the different forms of dance we nevertheless should emphasize some common features. All dance involves bodily movement and it is a focus on this that makes the ‘dance as work’ approach most distinctive. If dance is movement this involves a relation between body and space, and the physical characteristics of that space—as a set of obstacles, platforms and openings—become important. To use this analogy in the study of work might entail, therefore, close attention to the ways in which bodies interact with their physical environment and the spaces and objects in it—as well as, where relevant, other bodies. Such concerns are not, of course, new to the study of work. Gilbreth’s (1909) work on bricklaying, for example, provides ample evidence of an early concern for movement in space and time. But to use the dance analogy is not to serve an instrumental purpose, as Gilbreth’s approach, and many that followed it, did. Instead it involves a concern with describing but also possibly evaluating, in aesthetic terms, the interaction of person and machine—but also of person and open space, person and other(s).

Despite the ‘tyranny’ of the assembly line or of the call centre, physical objects can be props as well as obstacles, and the factory or office floor offers spaces for bodies to move between and within physical structures. Chugh and Hancock (2009), for example, in their study of two London hairdressing salons draw attention to space, light, temperature, artefacts such as towels, mugs and so on, and even smell as important parts of the setting within which embodied work takes place. Dance also, of course, often involves bodies moving in relation to other human bodies—the patterns of approach and retreat, of holding and letting go, of intimacy and distance. An ethnography of work that is informed by the dance analogy will involve attending to such issues as part of a rich portrayal of what it means to ‘work’ and might help us examine relationships that might be ‘cold’, ‘cool’, ‘warm’ or ‘hot’, to use a classification suggested by Ungerson (2005), albeit in the admittedly rather different context of a discussion of care relationships. It might also help us to describe movement between such states, viewing work as embodied labour, and linking bodily movement and performance with emotion, something that again the Chugh and Hancock (2009: 469–470) study suggests in the quotation provided by one of their respondents who says:

It is more important what you are doing in the salon and the people working in the salon, the environment, the people who are working, moving, the way they talk, the way they move their hands is what does make the salon … without the stylists, without the receptionists … and the technicians when the salon is empty, it looks very bad … what makes the salon beautiful is the people inside doing what they do … make it fuller, richer and colourful and powerful.

The movements in a dance are often repetitive movements—something emphasized by Slutskaya and Schreven (2007: 175) as important partly because ‘Repetition allows me to recognize myself as one-self, and to recognize others, as the same or as different from me’. This importance of repetition in relation to recognizing others as the same or different is surely important in a work context. Moreover a related feature of dance is rhythm. Rhythm, as a musical term which is also applicable to dance, can be understood as ‘the subdivision of a span of time into sections perceivable by the senses; the grouping of musical sounds principally by means of duration and stress’ (Sadie 1984: 804). Such a notion of rhythm seems well-suited to the study of work and Cunha (2008) has emphasized its applicability to organizational life (see also Hockey and Allen-Collinson 2009). Rhythm has often been associated with the natural rhythms of human life—walking, breathing, the heartbeat (e.g. Engel 1920). Such regular rhythms or beats might be seen as associated with many forms of routinized work—not just the cycles associated with the assembly line or machine-paced work, but also that of bureaucracy and even professional practice such as that of a doctor of medicine. Rhythms need not be simple, either. Work is often subject to over-layering of rhythms. In teaching, for example, Connelly and Clandinin (1993) identify ten main school cycles observed in their research: including annual, weekly, daily and within-class. Rhythm, then, implies a kind of repetition—a cycling—it suggests a concern with identifying the nature and speed of this cycle and how cycles overlap or interrelate. Rhythms can, of course, be fast or slow but they can be more or less regular and subject to disruption. Attending to rhythmic patterns might be one part of an analysis of work (see also Cunha, 2008).

It was noted earlier that dance is primarily a non-verbal medium. It is true that dance is sometimes performed to the accompaniment of songs, but the words can be of incidental importance, serving a musical quality or to set a mood. To view work as dance might be to offer something complementary to the wealth of studies that rely solely on interview data or other forms of verbal data, even where such work deals with embodied issues, such as emotions (e.g Bolton, 2005). In de-emphasizing words one can become attentive to different issues—those precisely of rhythm, repetition, relation, movement. One can, of course still analyse these discursively, paying attention to their meaning and how this is created or emerges over time, allowing for the possibility that the creation of particular forms of work as ‘dances’ is not, necessarily, the outcome of a creative will—an act of choreography—but something more spontaneous (although Taylor, 1911, no doubt, has a lot to answer for in helping to bring about managerially-determined work design in which the worker has to fit in with pre-defined work patterns which allow little scope for self-expression).

Work as dance

This brief survey of some of the characteristics of dance and four different dance forms suggests that to view work as dance is not simply to look at bodies in sweaty motion. If work is a dance it might be of many different types. The reading of work as dance can be contextualized and politicized. It can serve as a heuristic device encouraging us to ask questions such as: What kind of dance—what steps are involved, what relationships and rhythms? How has it changed over time? How is performance gendered and what are the gender relations? What physical effects does it have on performers? How long or short is it? How do movements relate to the space in which they take place and its physical characteristics and artefacts? Is there a choreographer and if so who are they and what relation do they have with the performer? Such analysis leads one to question the extent to which the worker has autonomy in determining the steps taken. We might also ask: What emotions does the dance evoke in performer and in any audience(s)?

This latter point is, perhaps, particularly important as the cases of the tango, ballet and rave all illustrate how the act of dancing can be associated with the generation and expression of emotion. Partly, no doubt, this is the result of the interaction of partners, as well as from the effect of rhythm and physical exertion. As such, dancing can be seen as form of becoming as well as a form of being. As a process the experience is not to be considered purely from the point of view of the initiating motivation, as merely instrumental.

In so far as dance may evoke a generalized feeling of pleasure this is, to varying degrees, a possibility inherent in work, too. Work might become joyful performance—in part due to its physicality, rhythm and the human relationships that it involves. Pleasure might also come from the feeling of power it offers the performer: the ‘power to excite, sadden, soothe and chasten’ (Belair, 1993: 34), as one dancer put it, in explaining her love of ballet. In saying this I have no wish to romanticize work, to ignore the degradation of labour (Braverman, 1974; Sennett 1998) or to argue that repetitive work produces pleasure as frequently as dance does. I do, however, want to suggest that this is at least a possibility—and that even degraded work might, by very nature of its repetitive and rhythmic qualities, be experienced by those doing it as more or less pleasurable at times. At the very least we might be drawn along in work, and remember the distinction Baldamus (1961: 57–63) made between tedium and traction—with the opportunities for traction provided by repetitive, cyclical work providing a degree of satisfaction (or at least pseudo-satisfaction) as an alternative to tedium.

We have noted that dance is often a spectacle, and that this suggests the audience’s view might be as important as the dancer’s. Indeed the dancer might be orientated towards the audience and seek to evoke some reaction in them. While the ‘choreographing’ of work by management has received attention in work sociology, particularly of that in the labour process tradition from Braverman onwards (Braverman, 1974; Thompson and Smith, 2010), less attention has often been paid to the view of the audience understood as colleagues, or clients and even passers-by (for an exception see Chugh and Hancock, 2009). To employ the dance analogy might make us question to which audience the worker is orientated to and what effects workers/dancers wish to evoke in it. One such possible audience is, of course, the managerial audience but there are other possibilities—the worker’s peers and customers, for example. The dance analogy makes us attentive to the possibility of multiple audiences and to the aesthetics of labour (Chugh and Hancock, 2009; Witz et al., 2003)—labour that, of course, may be highly managed precisely to achieve a particular result.

To use the analogy of dance in this way is not to move us in an entirely new direction. It is something of a return to the concern with the physicality of work present in many classic studies. Let us remind ourselves, for example, of Whyte’s (1949) study of restaurants. This is worth re-visiting as a study that situates social relationships within physical space. To take one short piece from the article (Whyte, 1949: 306, with apologies for what might now be seen as sexist language in the original):

The [serving] counter in this case was only waist high. While the girls wrote out their orders, they were also able to try to spur the men on orally, and there was much pulling and hauling on this point both at the bar and at the pantry counter.

The men who did not get along in this relationship played a waiting game. That is, when the girls seemed to be putting on special pressure for speed, they would very obviously slow down or else even turn away from the bar or counter and not go back to work until the offending waitresses just left their order slips and stepped away themselves. Thus they originated action for the waitresses. While this defensive maneuver provided the men with some emotional satisfaction, it slowed down the service, increased the frustrations of the waitresses, and thus built up tensions, to be released in larger explosions later.

This extract shows a concern for physical movements and emotions, and the relations between the two. It represents something of a dance enacted between the men and women in this restaurant. A dance, of course, in which the participants were by no means in harmony.

Again, in seeing work as dance in these ways it might be objected that none of this is new—that the focus on movement, space and emotion can all be done without the use of the dance analogy. I acknowledge the force of this objection, and I would not wish to make too strong a claim for the use of a dance analogy as representing a radical break with the past and ushering in a new way of seeing work. All I would want to claim is that the dance analogy is a useful heuristic in drawing attention to these different dimensions of work and their relationship. Of course, from at least Gilbreth (1909) onwards, people have been attentive to movement in space, while the study of emotions at work, if of more recent origin, is now well advanced (e.g. Fineman, 2003). The use of the dance analogy might simply serve to draw attention to these different dimensions and encourage attempts to make connections between them.

The limits of the dance analogy

Although viewing work as dance might focus attention on movement and emotions, and their inter-relationships, it does have its limitations and some of these are considered here. Some objections, might, though, have more substance than others.

One possible objection is that the emphasis on physicality is limiting in a world where much work is done sitting in front of a computer screen—requiring little physical movement beyond the keystroke. Even here, though, the dance analogy might be useful. Such work does in fact involve movement—often repetitive movement. Moreover no job is purely sedentary—how and when the worker moves from the screen, and makes transitions from computer-mediated to more direct human interaction might itself be part of the ‘dance’ of this kind of work. Whalen et al. (2002) provide an example of ‘improvisational choreography’ in teleservice work, emphasizing how telesales representatives make use of tools and artefacts in their work performance.

Another objection is that in focusing on the immediate physicality of work the longer term structures and histories fall out of view. This is rather like the criticism of some symbolic interactionist and ethnomethodological writing as a micro-sociology with little sense of wider structures (Gouldner, 1970). However there is no reason why, in principle, the study of work as dance could not be given historical and structural dimensions. If there can be a political economy of the tango there can be of individual forms of work, too. The case of the tango as a dance form was chosen here precisely because it illustrates how dances are not fixed forms, but have a history and are culturally variable and apt to transform. The issue is largely methodological: whether or not to set any contemporary account in historical context or in a wider socio-political context. Indeed one could usefully make use of the dance analogy precisely to show how work has changed over time (perhaps in its rhythms, in its interactions, in the emotions it engenders).

A third objection, already alluded to, is that dance’s connotations are far too positive. After all dance is (usually?) pleasurable as an art or practice, while work is (often?) not. Dancing, it might be argued, is associated with leisure and the pleasure to be had from expressing one’s own desires, skills and interests. Dance is often spontaneous while work is more subject to constraint. Work, or at least the work which most employees perform, might more accurately be seen as ‘alienated labour’ (Marx, 1844: 177-8) and some would no doubt see this, in almost every respect, as the opposite of what dance involves, for the dancer. Such arguments can be countered in at least two ways.

One reply to such objections is to argue that if work seems the opposite of dance, the meaning of each could be reversed. Dance could resemble work, with the negative connotations that it sometimes carries today, while work could be a non-alienated form of labour and provide pleasure. Such a reversal might be illustrated with reference to the dance marathons which were at the peak of their popularity in America of the interwar years of the depression (Calabria, 1993; Martin, 1987, 1994). In these increasingly commercialized competitions some people became professional dancers—but in doing so endured the risk of injury as well as exhaustion, in order to earn a living. Thus dance, even as it takes the form of ‘popular entertainment’, can also take the form of alienated labour. Conversely if dance can become work, work could become dance-like, full of the sense of engagement, creativity and pleasure that those who might want work to be become more ‘playful’ (e.g. see Kane, 2004, who argues strongly for a ‘play ethic’ in which creativity and autonomy are emphasized, in opposition to the dominant cultural emphasis on the ‘work ethic’). In a slightly different vein work as a craft, as discussed by Sennett (2008) with its emphasis on skill acquired through rigorous practice and experience could also be seen as having dance-like features.

An alternative approach would be to say these are false oppositions—that work is not the opposite of dance and they do not stand in a dialectical relation to each other. Each can be more or less spontaneous, planned, alienated, joyous, commodified affairs—and in fact even some of these simultaneously. Both work and dance can be full of ambivalence and complexity. Dance is not non-alienated labour while work is alienated labour. Work is not constrained and dance unconstrained. In our complex everyday world of processes and becomings such icy abstractions are apt to melt away as we handle them. To study both work and dance could give due attention to the complex nature of these phenomena. It could also consider the broader social relations of production—the context in which the dance or work takes place and its instrumental purpose.

A more telling objection to the work as dance analogy is that dance is largely ‘wordless’. Even though movements might have meaning, the dance analogy draws attention away from the actor’s written or spoken words and thus risks downplaying the significance of the word. This is, indeed a telling objection and is, I think, the most important limitation. No sociological view is complete, however; all that is argued for here is for the value of a particular heuristic. This could be seen as complementing rather than displacing other views; just as one can combine quantitative and qualitative methods in the same study (as does, for example, Whyte (1949) in the study of the restaurant, referred to earlier) so, too, one need not confine oneself to use of the dance analogy alone.

Conclusion

In this article I have argued that the dance analogy might be a useful heuristic in the study of all kinds of work. In many ways I see this as in the tradition of the embodied study of work, frequently demonstrated in classic sociological studies (e.g. MacLean, 1899; Roy, 1952; Whyte, 1949). To focus on work as dance might, I think, be particularly useful at the early stages of extended ethnographic studies of work. It would require close observation of who moves, how they move, and with what consequences. It would involve attentiveness to the rhythms of work—and to disruptions and breaks in rhythm. It would give close attention to gendered bodies acting in physical and social space. It would invite us to consider emotion as a central and emergent feature of embodied practices and suggest a need to consider the possibility of multiple audiences to which movement is orientated. Any such ethnography of work might, however, usefully consider how this particular form is not timeless; it has a history and might be in the process of transforming itself.

Methodologically this might suggest a need to watch before we talk and listen, although conversations might need to come later, to uncover the fuller meaning of the movements we see. I would not want this to replace the use of other approaches but it might serve to complement other views of work that focus on the verbal. In this the dance analogy could act as a heuristic in drawing attention to a variety of features of work as a process, and to the connections between them. In this it may serve to provide a rich picture of any given type of work, but also enable us to appreciate the rich variety of work forms. Perhaps we need to explore these possibilities. Using the dance heuristic might not take us into unexplored regions, but it might provide a useful guide as to what to look out for which might include rhythms, complex movements and interactions in space, and gendered embodied performance.