Dance in Qualitative Research

Dance can be content and/or form, process and/or product, in relation to qualitative inquiry. It may serve one or more of a variety of roles such as the subject matter for research, an aspect of methodology, and the format for presentation of findings.

Dance, dancing, and dancers have been examined as subjects of research during the past century and even before. Although dance scientists and some dance education researchers use primarily quantitative methods, a variety of qualitative, usually interdisciplinary, approaches have dominated dance research, with researchers invested in exploring dance and dancing as bodily experience, aesthetic object, and social and cultural process. Although different approaches and orientations are described in this entry, in practice the lines between them are often not easy to draw.

Although current dance research emphasizes inter-disciplinarity, there is debate within the field regarding the need to develop research methodology intrinsic to dance rather than borrow from other traditions, and movement analysis has been put forward as a candidate for this role. Movement analysis is used to study human and animal movement as well as dance. The best-known system, based on the work of Rudolf von Laban, derives from perception of movement according to defined characteristics such as body action (what), space (where), and effort (how). As with all analysis systems, these parameters cannot be applied across cultures and reveal only certain kinds of information; researchers create new ways of attending to bodily sensations and the rhythmic and visual organization of movement to meet the needs of individual research projects.

In the tradition of anthropologists, early 20th-century Western dance ethnographers, such as Beryl de Zoete and Franziska Boas, studied dance practices within cultures other than their own. Dance historians, such as Lincoln Kirstein and Walter Terry, wrote chronologies of Western dance and biographies of great artists. During more recent years, these once separate practices have fused, with dance scholars pursuing a hybrid, interdisciplinary “dance studies” approach. Joanne Kealiinohomoku's classic essay, “An Anthropologist Looks at Ballet as a Form of Ethnic Dance” (originally published in 1969–1970), helped to change this landscape. Dance culture in theaters, classrooms, studios, clubs, competitions, and other community settings is now studied through participant observation, interviews, and analysis of texts, images, and dance works as well as through a variety of theoretical lenses. The writings of the late Cynthia Jean Cohen Bull (Cynthia Novack), Susan Foster, and Susan Manning, among many others, exemplify this approach.

Like anthropologists and historians, researchers grounded in dance education may use an ethnographic approach, including participant observation, interviews, and (sometimes) movement analysis; Susan Stinson initiated such work during the 1980s. Data may also include visual images (both moving and still) and other kinds of original materials found in the setting; Karen Bond pioneered the use of children's drawings as data for dance education research. Interpretation of the source material is heavily dependent on the research tradition of the principal investigator. Action research, or research on one's own [Page 184]professional practice, has more recently become popular among practitioners, especially dance education researchers seeking to better understand and transform their practice. Qualitative approaches may also be used for research focused on evaluation and advocacy in dance education, although quantitative procedures may be demanded by external funding agencies.

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