Afterword

The Afterword identifies key ideas regarding dance and competition that are collectively generated throughout the book: how dance competition engages matters of identity; how institutions shape competition; its rewards, losses, and political potential; and how it facilitates community interaction. The Afterword moves on to question the kind of sociality that competition produces and whether it is possible to engage in competition geared toward forms of social exchange outside the dominant capitalist culture. Both within dance and across the broader social realm, a collective understanding of the world has disappeared in favor of a positioning and repositioning of the self within a network of similar selves. Individuals begin to assume that each is jockeying for a better position, using his or her contacts with others to advance, to acquire more resources, to present a better image. In short, they become entrepreneurial.