Dance Fieldwork Methods
The methods and ethical issues involved in studying dance ethnographically in its cultural setting.
Definition
The methods, practices, and ethics of ethnographic fieldwork on dance.
Scope
This topic covers the methodology of dance ethnography: participant observation and learning dances through the body, interviewing and working with practitioners, audiovisual documentation in the field, and reflexive and ethical considerations of the researcher's position. It addresses how embodied knowledge informs ethnographic understanding of dance.
Core questions
- How do researchers study dance through participation and embodied learning?
- What documentation and interviewing methods suit dance fieldwork?
- What ethical and reflexive issues arise in studying others' dance?
Key concepts
- participant observation
- embodied knowledge
- reflexivity
- audiovisual documentation
- research ethics
Key theories
- Embodied knowledge in ethnographic method
- The position that learning to move as practitioners do is itself a method of understanding, so that the ethnographer's body becomes a research instrument for grasping dance from within.
History
As dance ethnography matured, scholars articulated its distinctive methods in the late twentieth century, emphasizing embodied participation, reflexivity about the researcher's role, and the ethics of representing the dance of others, consolidated in dedicated methodological collections.
Debates
- Insider participation versus analytic distance
- Ethnographers debate how deeply a researcher should learn and perform a dance to understand it, weighing the insight of embodied participation against the risks to analytic perspective and representation.
Key figures
- Theresa Buckland
- Deidre Sklar
- Adrienne Kaeppler
Related topics
Seminal works
- buckland1999
- sklar1991
Frequently asked questions
- Do dance ethnographers learn the dances they study?
- Often yes; many dance ethnographers learn to perform the dances they study because embodied participation can yield understanding that observation alone cannot, though it also raises methodological and ethical questions.