Relive, reflect, and refocus

Give ballroom dancers a break: Relive, reflect, and refocus

I dove into a specific (unknown) lifestyle to learn about motivations and behaviour.

Keywords: Ballroom scene Rotterdam
Project: Lifestyle research
2022

The aim of this project was to research a lifestyle by emerging in their activities and analyzing the community while ultimately designing something that complements and enriches this lifestyle. The lifestyle to research and design for is: Ballroom dancers in Rotterdam.

When you hear the word "ballroom dancers," you might picture elegant and classical ballrooms full of couples waltzing. The ballroom dancers I am talking about are dancers from the ballroom scene.

The ballroom scene is a community built by LGBTQ+ Latin and African-American people. They meet together at "balls," where they engage in "voguing" dance battles. Voguing is characterized by sharp, angular, and dramatic arm and body movements, as well as quick turns and poses. The aim of the balls is to give these people enough confidence to be the best version of themselves.

After having conducted desk research on the history of the ballroom scene and after having participated in a voguing dance class, we spoke with three ballroom dancers who all are active members of the scene in order to learn more about their motivations, aspirations, and desires.

We chose to use not only words but also images for letting the three interviewees express their ideas (about ballroom and about their lives in general).

The Ballroom dancers can unwind using relive, reflect and refocus and prepare themselves for their hard-working life after a weekend filled with events while maintaining the confidence they gained at the balls. Six skin-care masks are included in the box, which have reflective questions behind them.