This paper aims to extrapolate the difficulties and challenges posed by ideas about creativity principally in the context of doctoral theses in which the practices of dance play a prominent, if not, pivotal role. While resisting definitive transparency, creativity is a crucial marker as much for postgraduate scholars as it is for artists. The sometimes subtle differences between the two creative identities generate compromise and revision within the conventions borne by both when a merger like artistic research manifests itself in doctoral study. Knowledge and language, theory and protocols become part of a shifting academic landscape arguably because the new knowledge-seekers have different modes of exploring and demonstrating their creative attributes. (Contains 1 note.)