Pleasure and time in senior dance: bringing temporality into focus in the field of ageing

Abstract

AbstractPopulation ageing and discourses on healthy ageing have led to a growing interest in social dancing for seniors. While senior dance has been described as both common and contributing to good health, the fundamental connection between bodily and temporal dimensions has been fairly neglected. As a result, there is a risk of portraying dance among older adults as a general practice, while at the same time the senior dance's potential to shed light on relations between temporality and ageing is not utilised. Based on qualitative interviews with 25 women and eight men, aged 52–81, in Sweden, whose main leisure activity was dancing, this article sheds light on this knowledge gap by illustrating the pleasurable experiences of senior dance. The results illustrate that the pleasurable experiences of dancing can be understood as three different experiences of temporality: embodied experience of extended present, an interaction with synchronised transcending subjectivities and age identities with unbroken temporality. The results also highlight the central role that temporal aspects play in processes around subjectivities in later life, as well as the close connection between ageing embodiment and temporality. They also illustrate the ability of dance to create wellbeing, not only through its physical elements, but also through the sociality that constitutes the core of dancing. In light of these results, the article argues that the temporal processes relate to individuals’ diverse relationship with the world and that they therefore play a central role in subjective experiences of ageing.