Abstract
While scholarship on youth dance has increasingly focused on hypersexualization, far less attention has been given to the emotional demands placed on young performers. This article introduces the concept of emotional adultification: the expectation that children embody adult emotional narratives such as trauma, grief, depression, pregnancy, and suicide. Drawing on over thirty years of experience in competitive choreography, I examine how these practices raise ethical, developmental, and pedagogical concerns for young dancers. By treating children’s inner worlds as emotionally mature before they are developmentally ready, emotional adultification disrupts healthy artistic growth and well-being. This article calls for a broader critical lens in dance education—one that extends beyond costuming and movement to interrogate emotional and thematic appropriateness in youth performance.
Introduction
Recent conversations about youth dance have rightly centered on the dangers of hypersexualization. However, alongside this visible critique exists a quieter, increasingly normalized practice: children being asked to perform choreography rooted in adult emotional experiences such as suicide, depression, despair, and grief. I refer to this phenomenon as emotional adultification. This is not to suggest that children never encounter difficult emotions, but rather that they are far less likely than adults to possess the developmental capacity to process, embody, and repeatedly perform them for public consumption.
Hypersexualization treats a child’s body as if it were already adult. Emotional adultification treats the child’s inner world as if it were fully formed. Both impose adult expectations onto children, severing the natural relationship between lived emotion and artistic expression. When this disconnect becomes normalized, children are asked not to explore their feelings, but to perform them.
Defining Emotional Adultification
At a dance competition, a lyrical duet performed by two dancers – appearing younger than the teen division – was inspired by a popular novel-turned-film about a child conceived to serve as an organ donor for her terminally ill sister. The theme was made explicit through the routine’s title and the use of a bald cap worn by one dancer to signify cancer. This imagery was not only unnecessary but ethically troubling, requiring a child to cosplay terminal illness while disregarding the potential impact on audiences with lived experiences of loss.
This raises critical questions: How was this concept introduced to the dancers? What emotional preparation was expected of them? And how can a child meaningfully embody trauma they have not lived? This example illustrates emotional adultification: the expectation that young dancers perform adult emotional narratives without the developmental capacity to fully understand them.
Dance scholarship has extensively examined sexualized embodiment. Russell, Schaefer, and Reilly note that “sexualized dance routines for pre-pubescent girls are age-inappropriate and potentially harmful” in competitive contexts (2018). Yet the emotional labor demanded of children remains largely unexamined. Emotional adultification expands this discourse by identifying affective exploitation – the use of children’s emotional performance as aesthetic currency.
A Practitioner’s Perspective
In my twenty-four years as a competition choreographer, I have witnessed routines that include pregnancy tests as props, teenagers acting out miscarriages and reconciliations, and even narratives involving childhood cancer. I have seen solos centered on suicide, dances featuring simulated blood, and group pieces titled Hell Is for Children.
Indeed, contemporary youth are increasingly exposed to traumatic narratives through media, social platforms, and broader sociopolitical realities, including school violence (Saputri et al., n.d.). Some argue that staging such themes can foster empathy or offer catharsis. In my experience, when dancers create work rooted in their own lived loss, honoring a friend or processing grief, dance can function as a healing practice. These works are grounded in remembrance, not spectacle.
However, there is a crucial difference between processing lived experience and fabricating emotional trauma for competitive performance. Directing children, particularly those without personal context, to enact terminal illness, suicide, or despair (primarily when centering around adult issues like infertility) raises serious ethical concerns. In these cases, trauma is not processed; it is aestheticized. Emotional weight becomes a tool for scoring rather than for understanding.
At the same time, a striking double standard persists. When young girls perform with confidence, strength, or a sense of feminine power, these dances are often labeled “too mature” or “hypersexual.” Yet performances rooted in despair are praised for depth. This contradiction invites us to ask: who decides what is sexual, and who decides what is appropriate? Is it the child—or the adult projecting their own discomfort? There is no question that hypersexualization is wrong. Do children see themselves as ‘sexy’, or is that something adults project onto them? And why are young male dancers frequently hypersexualized without critique?
The fundamental ethical question is not just about costumes or choreography, but about who has the power to define them. Simply requiring more modest costumes for young dancers, in hopes of protecting them from unwanted attention, does not solve the real problem. To truly address both hypersexualization and emotional adultification, we need to look at the adults who create, reward, and consume these performances, instead of limiting how children express themselves through dance.
Manufactured Emotion and Pedagogical Practice
Emotional adultification also appears in how children are coached to perform emotion. In lyrical and contemporary settings, dancers frequently ask instructors how to “look” sad, angry, or heartbroken. Choreographers often respond with explicit direction: when to cry, where to emote, and how to signal intensity.
Because competitive music often centers on adult themes such as romantic love and heartbreak, instructors use analogies to make these emotions more accessible. Children are told to “pretend you lost your puppy” to express grief or to substitute familial love for romantic attachment. While well-intentioned, these strategies teach dancers that emotional expression is something to manufacture rather than inhabit.
Over time, dancers become adept at producing emotion on cue. Competitive stages reward recognizable emotional shortcuts: exaggerated facial expressions, dramatic gasps, overt anguish. These performances are legible and often rewarded, yet they frequently lack genuine emotional presence. I observe similar patterns on collegiate dance team stages, where intensity eclipses nuance.
True artistry often resides in subtlety, a breath, a shift in energy, a moment of musical sensitivity. When children are trained to rely on exaggeration rather than embodied awareness, performance becomes about appearance rather than presence. Emotional adultification is thus reinforced not only through content but through pedagogy.
Why Emotional Adultification Matters
The consequences of emotional adultification are both ethical and developmental. Repeatedly performing adult emotional states can place burdens on children they are not equipped to process, contributing to anxiety, confusion, or emotional detachment. More broadly, this reflects a competitive culture that values emotional spectacle over dancer well-being.
Sandlos argues that competitive dance has become a site where adult expectations of artistry increasingly compromise young dancers’ emotional health. When trauma-based narratives are used primarily to impress judges, children become vessels for adult catharsis rather than supported as developing artists (Cutler & Nicole, 2025).
The Neuroscience of Emotional Adultification
Research across neuroscience and psychology confirms that adolescents are developmentally distinct from adults (United States: Thrown Away, 2005). Polito and Berryessa describe adolescence as a period of significant neurological restructuring, marked by changes in brain connectivity and emotional processing (Cognitive Development, n.d.).
The prefrontal cortex—responsible for emotional regulation and impulse control—does not fully mature until around age 25. Meanwhile, the limbic system develops earlier, heightening emotional reactivity and sensitivity to approval (Steinberg, 2009). This imbalance makes adolescents especially vulnerable to emotionally charged performance environments.
From this perspective, asking children to enact grief, despair, or suicidal ideation repeatedly is not merely an artistic decision; it is a psychological contradiction. When approval becomes tied to emotional performance, dancers may prioritize imitation over self-awareness. Research suggests this can interfere with emotional regulation and identity formation during adolescence (Effects of Hypersexualization on Mental Health, 2025).
Conclusion
Emotional adultification challenges prevailing assumptions about maturity and artistry in dance education. Performances labeled as “mature” often rely on children reproducing adult emotional narratives rather than engaging in developmentally appropriate expression. Naming this practice allows for a more ethical pedagogical approach—one that honors children’s voices without placing adult emotional burdens upon them. While critiques of hypersexualization remain essential, educators, choreographers, and adjudicators must also evaluate whether the emotional and thematic content presented at competitions is appropriate for young dancers. Protecting children in dance requires not only attention to how they appear on stage, but a sustained commitment to their emotional well-being and creative development.
References
Cutler, N., & Nicole. (2025). When did we start expecting children to dance like adults?
https://www.nicolecutler.com/post/when-children-dance-like-adults
Effects of hypersexualization on mental health. (2025). Dance Awareness.
https://www.danceawareness.com/2025/05/28/effects-of-hypersexualization-on-mental-health/
National Research Council. (2013). Reforming juvenile justice: A developmental approach. The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/14685
Polito, I., & Berryessa, C. M. (Forthcoming). The neurobiological and psychological nature of “adultification”: Implications for legal decision-making in cases involving adolescents. In H. C.
Chan & E. Svingen (Eds.), Youth deviance, crime, and justice: The neuro-psycho-criminological perspective. Wiley.
Russell, A., Schaefer, G., & Reilly, E. (2018). Sexualized dance routines for young girls are becoming more and more common in dance competitions. Strategies: A Journal for Physical and Sport Educators, 31(5), 3–7. https://doi.org/10.1080/08924562.2018.1496938
Sandlos, L. (2023). In the land of dance: Unpacking sexualization and the well-being of girls in competitive dance. Canadian Dance Assembly Research Papers.
Saputri, C., Sholihah, H., & Amalia, R. (n.d.). The impact of social media on children’s social emotional development.
https://injoser.joln.org/index.php/123/article/view/206
Steinberg, L. (2009). Risk taking in adolescence: New perspectives from brain and behavioral science. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 16(2), 55–59. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8721.2007.00475.x
Steinberg, L., & Scott, E. S. (2005). Less guilty by reason of adolescence: Developmental immaturity, diminished responsibility, and the juvenile death penalty. American Psychologist, 58(12), 1009–1018. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.58.12.1009
United States: Thrown away—Children’s rights in the U.S. juvenile justice system. (2005). Human Rights Watch.
https://www.hrw.org/reports/2005/us0205/6.htm
U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. (n.d.). Cognitive development.
https://opa.hhs.gov/adolescent-health/adolescent-development-explained/cognitive-development
When does the prefrontal cortex fully develop? (n.d.). Simply Psychology.
https://www.simplypsychology.org/prefrontal-cortex-development-age.html
Bio: Neo Lynch is an accomplished commercial dancer and educator with over twenty years of teaching experience and professional credits alongside artists such as Beyoncé, Ciara, Gucci Mane, Bow Wow, and The Ying Yang Twins. She holds a Master of Fine Arts in Choreography and has trained dancers at all levels, ranging from recreational participants to pre-professionals and established artists. Her choreographic work has received national recognition at conventions and competitions, including multiple Choreography Excellence Awards in hip-hop, jazz, lyrical, and contemporary genres. In 2024, she was honored with the National Dance Education Organization’s Outstanding Leadership in the Independent Sector Award. Lynch’s research and advocacy address inequities within the private studio sector and competition culture, specifically analyzing how racialized aesthetics, pedagogical approaches, and power structures influence dancers’ experiences and artistic identities. She holds residencies at multiple competition studios throughout the DMV region, serves as a guest choreographer nationally, and teaches master classes for universities and private studio programs. Lynch is the founder of the Black Dance Teachers Association (BDTA), a community-centered organization that supports BIPOC dance educators by providing a safe, affirming space to share resources, experiences, and collective knowledge. Lynch has presented nationally through the National Dance Education Organization (NDEO), including the session Knees Like Becky: Colorblind and Color-Conscious Aesthetics in Hip-Hop Choreography. She has also presented at the Dance Educators Training Institute (DETI) and facilitated the B.R.E.A.D. (Building Racial Equity in the Arts through Dance) & Butter of Southern Hip Hop forum and served as a panelist for the RVA Dance Forum’s “Racism in Dance” series.
