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The analysis presented here is based on a phenomenological interview study conducted with sixteen professional contemporary dancers, and focuses on the differences between the accounts of male and female dancers with regard to notions of openness in dance and to associated feelings of emotional vulnerability and metaphorical nakedness or exposure. In a way that is reminiscent of Young's (1980) description of "throwing like a girl," such feelings of vulnerability and accompanying self-consciousness were considerably more noticeable in the accounts of the female dancers, tending to emerge when dancers were asked to express something of a personal or private nature through dance in the presence of others. This paper explores potential resonances between feminine throwing experience as conceptualized by Young (1980) and female dancing experience for my interviewees. Significantly, however, it moves beyond a direct parallel with Young's (1980) work to explore this sense of vulnerability in a context where female dancers did not display the reduced physical competencies typical of "throwing like a girl." The article further suggests that the dualist concepts of transcendence and immanence may not be appropriate for understanding the experience of dance, including its gendered dimensions, and that we should instead look to theorizing dancing body-subjectivity in ways that attend to the blurring of the boundaries of such binaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Experiences of puberty and how individuals adapt to puberty may be integral to success in ballet; however, there is a paucity of current research in this area. This study explores the lived experiences of nine professional ballet dancers to capture the journey of negotiating puberty in a ballet context. An interpretative phenomenological analysis approach was employed with semistructured interviews utilized to gather rich, descriptive accounts from nine professional ballet dancers from the United Kingdom and United States. Lived experiences were characterized by conflict and struggle, coming to terms with physical changes and possessing grit and grace in order to successfully negotiate puberty, and to succeed and survive in professional ballet. Accepting physical and esthetic strengths and weaknesses and learning how to adapt or how to compensate for weaknesses was described as pivotal. Factors such as social support, the timing and extent of pubertal changes, dance teacher behaviors, and the ballet training context influenced the extent to which dancers experienced conflict and struggle and how easily they were able to come to terms with their adult physique. Further research is needed to explore the implications of maturing and developing within the context of ballet training and to develop strategies to better facilitate healthy development in ballet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including research on social aspects of female athletes' injury experiences, psychology and sport injury, and risks of sports supplements for female athletes.