The Passion Project: Investigating Harmonious and Obsessive Passion in the Convention Dance Realm / Morijah Thomas (2024)

Dance competitions in the USA have been a significant part of dance life since 1970, and in the past few years merged into multibillion-dollar making dance conventions (Schupp, 2018; Schupp, 2020). Similar to competitions, dance conventions are events throughout the year where dance studios attend to participate in a variety of dance classes for the weekend as well as compete for adjudicated awards (Schupp, 2018b). The key distinction between dance competitions and conventions is the classes intertwined in the schedule throughout the weekend. These classes can include but are not limited to jazz, contemporary, ballet, hip-hop, jazz funk, and tap, offering dancers a multitude of genres to attend. On these exhausting but exhilarating weekends dancers train all day, perform at night, and then repeat the same process the next day. Award ceremonies at conventions can often extend until midnight, only for dancers to repeat everything all over again the following morning, sometimes as early as 5 a.m. (Feidelson, 2017). Dance studios have shaped their training goals towards convention and competition outcomes, and have morphed into a competitive culture (Schupp, 2020b). This now presses stress on children which makes them internalise this competitive mindset and their value is now measured on winning at these conventions (Schupp, 2020b). Due to the central role that conventions play in the lives and training of these young dancers, this study proposes that it can have an impact on the way they develop and understand their passion for dance and dance conventions. By using Robert Vallerands Dualistic Model of Passion (2015) which looks at the psychological side of two types of passion, harmonious passion (HP from now on) and obsessive passion (OP from now on), this study will gain insight on dancer’s passion within the competitive convention realm of dance.