Dance Ethnography and Anthropology
The study of dance as human social and cultural behavior across societies, through anthropological theory and ethnographic fieldwork.
Definition
The anthropological and ethnographic study of dance as culturally situated human movement and behavior.
Scope
This area covers the anthropological study of dance: how dance functions within cultures as communication, ritual, and social organization; the comparative analysis of dance structures across societies (ethnochoreology); the role of dance in ritual and ceremony; and the field methods used to study dance in its cultural context. It treats dance as embedded human behavior, not only as art.
Sub-topics
Core questions
- How does dance function within the social and cultural life of a society?
- How can dance structures be analyzed and compared across cultures?
- What roles does dance play in ritual and ceremony?
- What methods are appropriate for studying dance in the field?
Key concepts
- dance as culture
- ethnochoreology
- ritual
- fieldwork
- nonverbal communication
- structural analysis
Key theories
- Dance as nonverbal communication and cultural behavior
- The view that dance is a culturally structured form of human communication and social behavior that can be analyzed for its meanings and functions within a society.
- Structural-comparative analysis of dance
- The anthropological program of analyzing the structure and form of dance to compare practices across cultures and relate them to social organization.
History
The anthropological study of dance developed from early ethnographic observation into a self-conscious field in the 1960s and 1970s, when scholars established theoretical frameworks treating dance as structured cultural behavior and articulated methods for ethnographic fieldwork on dance.
Debates
- Etic structural analysis versus emic cultural meaning
- Anthropologists debate whether dance is best understood through externally imposed structural categories or through the meanings recognized by practitioners within their own culture.
Key figures
- Adrienne Kaeppler
- Anya Peterson Royce
- Judith Lynne Hanna
- Theresa Buckland
Related topics
Seminal works
- royce1977
- hanna1979
Frequently asked questions
- How does the anthropology of dance differ from dance history?
- The anthropology of dance studies dance as living cultural behavior, often through fieldwork in contemporary communities, whereas dance history reconstructs and interprets past dance practices, though the two frequently overlap.