Acta Gymnica 2020, 50(2):68-76 | DOI: 10.5507/ag.2020.010

Motivational structure of female and male dancers of different dance disciplines

Petra Zaletel, Tanja Kajtna

Faculty of Sport, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia

Background: Success in the sport of dance is determined not only by physical and aesthetics factors but also with psychological preparation, where motivation is one of the most important dimensions. In motivated dance performances, athletes try harder than usual, put more attention on their sport and everything connected with it, choose to have longer trainings and compete better.

Objective: The aim of our study was to explore the motivation structure of female and male dancers from four different dance disciplines (Latin American and ballroom, acrobatic rock'n'roll, modern-jazz, ballet) to determine the role of efficiency-oriented and competitive motivation on practice and results.

Methods: A questionnaire of competitive motives was used to determine the motivational scale of motives of individual subjects. A total of 110 top female and male dancers were compared by gender and dance discipline with a two-way analysis of variance according to their motivation. Factor analysis was used to determine the latent factors of their motivation so as to more precisely explain what drives a dancer, since a large number of explicit variables is more clearly presented through its latent structure.

Results: Females pay more attention to the motives of self-control, emotional relaxation, self-awareness, and to socially-oriented motives. Male dancers have significantly less negative competitive motivation. Sport dancers (Latin American and ballroom, rock'n'roll) have a bigger need for self-respect. Social needs are the most important for the Latin American and ballroom dancers, the motive for self-actualization is a priority of both modern-jazz dancers and sport dancers, the possibilities of self-control are very important for modern-jazz and ballet dancers.

Conclusions: We found that male dancers tend to be dominating and leading with a strong power motive, while female dancers are more focused on motives like emotional relaxation, self-control and social understanding.

Keywords: ballroom, Latin American, self-respect, top-level athletes, latent structure

Received: December 10, 2019; Revised: August 28, 2020; Accepted: September 11, 2020; Prepublished online: September 24, 2020; Published: September 28, 2020  Show citation