Jane Westrick
Women Dancing, 2025
Flashe, acrylic, crayon, pastel, colored pencil, toner, and paper on canvas
14 x 14 inches
 
When I stumbled into taking ballroom dance lessons, I noticed immediately the rigidity of the roles. Divided into male leaders and female followers, the performance of binary gender is embedded in the gestures, reinforced by the costumes. In response to this division, I recreate ballroom positions with more fluid and open roles. This painting shows two women dancing together. The feminine dressed woman leads and her masculine counterpart takes up the following role. Disrupting the traditional values of the sport, my paintings ask what it would look like for women to lead in dance, and by extension, larger society.