When photographer Christian Sinibaldi first visited world champion cheerleaders London’s Unity Allstars Black, in January 2020, he had no expectations. In fact, he admits , he had “a few stigmas associated with cheerleaders”. What he learned that day surprised him. “I loved the energy, the connection between people,” he says. It kickstarted a fascination that would take him around the world to capture a sport on the cusp of global popularity, a project that took him from the markets of Ho Chi Minh City to the tunnels of Lagos stadium.
Cheerleading has long been associated with high school movies and glittery sideline entertainment, but it has a rich history – one that has fascinated me since I cheered at high school in the 90s. My master’s thesis was an ethnography of cheerleading, following a squad throughout a season. For my doctoral dissertation, I wrote a cultural history of the sport. Cheerleading began in the US in the late 19th century, growing out of the civil war and finding a place among the sidelines of elite all-male higher education institutions. There were almost no women cheerleaders until men went to war in the 40s. In the latter half of the 20th century it was feminised and sexualised, before evolving into a competitive athletic endeavour of its own as a result of second wave feminism. It has since been further democratised and radicalised – there are squads of all ages and genders, advocating for all manner of social justice causes.
No longer constrained to the sidelines of other players’ games, cheerleaders now take centre stage, competing for medals in routines of two and a half minutes that consist of stunts, jumps, tumbling, dancing and cheering. The latest variation is known as all-star cheer: athletes divorced from any other sport, who cheer for one another and, ultimately, themselves.
Soon Olympic gold may be on the line. In 2004, the International Cheer Union (ICU) was recognised as the worldwide governing body for cheerleading. With 119 National Cheer Federations and 10 million athletes worldwide, it shows a global demand and popularity within a formalised, scorable system – all-important criteria for Olympic consideration. The International Olympic Committee recognised cheerleading as a sport in 2021, an important distinction that may one day lead to official Olympic status. The ICU offers training and certification for coaches – of particular importance in places such as Azerbaijan, Ivory Coast and Mongolia, where cheerleading is less common.
For Sinibaldi, this meant he could travel the world in pursuit of new cheer communities. “I’m very interested in how photography can be used as a tool to talk about communities and people,” he says, “so the sport in this case is an excuse for me to talk about how young people are helping each other to grow.”
Vietnam’s Saigon Beast team, which formed in 2017 and came third in the Asia Cheerleading Invitational Championships that year, has grown from just six members at the start to 20 today. Husband and wife coaches Hung and Trang Le are self-taught, spending hours on YouTube learning techniques and practising choreography. She is a real estate agent and he works part-time in marketing and event management, while trying to move to full-time coaching. Cheerleading is the couple’s passion and special bond – they create everything, from the costumes to the stunts and routines, and dedicate all their spare time to the team.
Sinibaldi captured the squads both in and outside of their typical practice spaces: in one of the oldest parts of Ho Chi Minh City; the streets of London’s Soho; a market in Lagos where he involved so many local people to help him stop the traffic that he earned himself a nickname that roughly translates as “the special one”. The shoots weren’t without their dangers; Sinibaldi recalls a cheerleader falling on his head during one. Competitive cheer, with its heightened focus on stunting and tumbling, can lead to injury: concussions, broken bones and sprained ligaments are common.
Whether he was in Athens in Greece or Astana in Kazakhstan, cheerleaders talked to Sinibaldi about teamwork. “Everybody was saying that you might see the flyers performing this incredible stunt,” he says of those at the top of a pyramid or being thrown into the air, “but obviously they would be nothing without the base. It is a very pyramidal structure, but everybody plays a fundamental role.”