This article explores the creative role of contemporary dancers within the choreographic process, and introduces the question of why their creative contribution is often overlooked? It highlights how different modes of creativity can be understood, and what impacts different choreographic processes have on the way dancers understand their creative…

This article reflects upon the process of creating dance in an intermedial telematic dance setting with university students. Some contextualisation is made of five telematic dance projects (the "Phillypool Projects 2007-2012") that have taken place between two universities, one in the UK and one in the US. It will explore some of the…

Contemporary dance in East Africa, specifically Kenya, is a newly emerging art form informed by the political drive of a small number of choreographers. In this article, I discuss Kenyan choreographer Opiyo Okach's contribution to dance training as exemplified through the "Shift … centre Series 10" which was performed at The Place,…

Commitment to an activity forms an essential part of the talent development process, yet little is known about the reasons why young people commit to dance training. The aim of this study was to investigate the factors that affect young dancers' commitment to a selective dance talent scheme. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 19…

The debate surrounding the documentation of performance is principally concerned with the ephemerality of the live event, set against the stasis and "death" that the archive is conventionally believed to represent. The advent of digital technology in live performance has complexified this still further, by altering the architecture, space and…

The Monaco Dance Forum (MDF), a biennale of dance that takes place in the beautiful and affluent surroundings of Monte Carlo, has chosen this time to celebrate as its theme the centenary of the "Ballets Russes." Diaghilev's famous company made its first tour in 1909, an event that unarguably changed ballet's status as an art form, and heralded…

In this article, the author describes the 11th Dance and the Child International (daCi) Conference 2009 which was hosted by the Edna Manley School of the Visual and Performing Arts in Kingston, Jamaica from August 2-8. Nicholeen Degrasse-Johnson, the director of the Edna Manley School of Dance along with daCi officials, including the president of…

The purpose of the present study was to extend the findings obtained in previous reversal theory based dance research by investigating dancers' perceptions of their own arousal levels and performance and their motivational states when performing. A group of modern dancers (n = 21), performing at a dance competition, acted as volunteer…

The subjective experience of flow in professional dancers was analyzed using interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA). Flow is believed to be a psychological state in which the mind and body "just click", creating optimal performance. Unfortunately, sport and performance research have severely neglected reviewing the flow experience in…

The purpose of this study was to identify and examine the methods that professional dancers use to engage fully into their work as artists. Participants (N=15) were professional dancers from five European nationalities, (7 females; 8 males), currently performing for three major Scotland-based dance companies, including two professional free-lance…

The purpose of this research is to instigate a debate about the way in which professional ballet dancers are trained and the content of that training. The literature on the teaching of ballet has always focused on two areas: ballet vocabulary and training. The former is treated as both a fixed and autonomous form, and, for the latter, methods of…

Uses the author's experiences as a performer, choreographer, artistic director, and teacher to investigate the notion of the performer's presence in dance, providing examples from her teaching a graduate module in performance making (choreography) to illustrate how performance practice and poststructuralist theory can influence each other. Three…