My found roots of overstretching, tricks, and 2 pc costumes at comps

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   talfonsoposted 5 years ago

   As a dance fan who admires pre-1995 jazz dance and pre-1999 lyrical, I have heard from people blaming SYTYCD, Dance Moms, or WoD for the overstretching trend, excessive tricks, and 2-piece costuming. (Note: not that I'm against showing off body lines, which is essential to dance anyway, but there are ways for dancers to do so while being modest.)
   
   Well, I searched deep down the Internet Archive and pinpointed an overlooked root: Dance.net. It was a page about stretching from 2002 (https://web.archive.org/web/20020225183 … ching.html), which mentioned a needle pose. Pictures of contortionists and rhythmic gymnasts peppered the page among those of actual dancers.
   
   Digging even deeper, I noticed that some of the photos of the former groups uploaded to the pages of the same pages of the same site stem from The Contortion Home Page (https://web.archive.org/web/19991013034 … mepage.com).
   
   I noticed that dancers weren't only seeking advice to do the splits, thus, they also envied the feats of flexibility, which in turn claimed to help them score high at their competitions. So, they started stretching like them (oversplits, the aforementioned needles, etc.). They also began incorporating much of the same tricks as the RG's did in the videos, despite most of them having dial-up at the time.
   
   Also, the RG videos pinpointed another root: girls doing grandes pirouettes a la secondes, aka "fouettes with legs horizontal," according to the CoP by the FIG. I'm not against seeing them do so, but in classic jazz (think Mattox, Cole, Fosse, etc.) as well as ballet, those moves are reserved for males. They began crowding out the fouettes which were the norm the dates they began uploading the photos to DDN.
   
   As mentioned, dancers needed to wear something that shows off body lines, but due to the influence those photos had - as well as commercialization of contemporary dance and general media sexualization - they ditched the tights and bared their stomachs more. After all, some of the contortionists wore bikinis and rhythmic gymnasts wore leotards over bare legs in the photos posted on CHP and DDN.
   
   Thoughts?

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