This article examines how dance knowledge is seen through syllabuses in Swedish upper secondary schools. A starting point is life-world phenomenology. A phenomenological way of thinking allows that human beings are intersubjective, linked with and within the world, which influences the view of dance knowledge and how research is elaborated. A basic rule and starting point for research within phenomenology is to turn toward the things themselves and to be adherent. Dance knowledge constitutes the phenomenon studied, as revealed in dance syllabus steering documents. Spiegelberg's philosophical method is used as a base for phenomenological text analysis. The study is limited to syllabuses from two different curricula, labeled by The Swedish National Agency for Education as Lpf94 and Gy11. The analysis results in two images of how the essence of dance knowledge is manifested. Finally, the different constitutions are discussed and related to a life-world phenomenological view of dance knowledge.