Researching Dance: Evolving Modes of Inquiry PDF
Preview Researching Dance: Evolving Modes of Inquiry
R(~(ARCMI~(j DA~C( R(~(ARCMI~(j DA~C( EVOLVING MODES OF INQUIRY Edited by Sondra Horton Fraleigh and Penelope Hanstein UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH PRESS .., ." .. ----------~ J<"""' •• ; .... "'~ // Published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, Pa. 15261 Copyright © 1999, University of Pittsburgh Press All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Printed on acid-free paper 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Researching dance: evolving modes of inquiry / edited by Sondra Horton Fraleigh and Penelope Hanstein. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8229-4084-1 (cloth: acid-free paper) ISBN 0-8229-5684-5 (pbk. : acid-free paper) 1. Dance-Research. I. Fraleigh, Sondra Horton, 1939- II. Hanstein, Penelope. GV1589 .R47 1998 792.8' 072-dc21 Figure 9.1 is from Participant Observation by James P. Spradley, copyright © 1980 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Reproduced by permission of the publisher. A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. CONTENTS Preface VII Part I. Context, Process, and Theory CHAPTER 1. Family Resemblance 3 Sondra Horton Fraleigh CHAPTER 2. From Idea to Research Proposal: Balancing the Systematic and Serendipitous 22 Penelope Hanstein CHAPTER 3. Models and Metaphors: Theory Making and the Creation of New Knowledge 62 Penelope Hanstein Part II. Modes of Inquiry and Dance Research Methods CHAPTER 4. Postpositivist Research in Dance 91 Jill Green and Susan W. Stinson CHAPTER 5. Scientific Exploration in Dance 124 Steven J. Chatfield CHAPTER 6. Dance in the Hermeneutic Circle Joann McNamara CHAPTER 7. Witnessing the Frog Pond 188 Sondra Horton Fraleigh CHAPTER 8. The Sense of the Past: Historiography and Dance 225 Shelley C. Berg CHAPTER 9. Dance Ethnography: Tracing the Weave of Dance in the Fabric of Culture 249 Joan D. Frosch Part III. Research Tools and Issues Specific to Dance CHAPTER 10. Every Little Movement Has a Meaning All Its Own: Movement Analysis in Dance Research Mary Alice Brennan CHAPTER 11. Engendering Dance: Feminist Inquiry and Dance Research 309 Jane c. Desmond CHAPTER 12. Cultural Diversity and Dance History Research 334 John O. Perpener III Unified Field Postscript 352 Sondra Horton Fraleigh and Penelope Hanstein List of Contributors 357 Index VI CONTENTS PREFACE Researching Dance: Evolving Modes of Inquiry introduces students to research methods in dance. This book is addressed primarily to graduate students and is particularly useful as a textbook for dance research classes. It will also appeal to advanced undergraduate students who are becoming acquainted with the subject matter and processes of dance research. Researchers and scholars will find the book valuable as well, since there are few published materials that explore modes of inquiry in dance research. As a survey of resources and methods, Researching Dance fills a gap because, for the first time, major areas and topics of concern are gathered together in one volume. In part 1, the editors introduce dance research as evolving. In "Family Resem blance," Sondra Fraleigh raises issues of definition and naming. "We name things and then we can talk about them" is how Ludwig Wittgenstein put this essential first step of identification and definition. Dance is defined contextually in view of its intrinsic participatory values, its developmental aspects, and its purposes from art to ritual. Penelope Hanstein takes the reader through the steps of the re search process in "From Idea to Research Proposal: Balancing the Systematic and Serendipitous." Her final chapter in part 1, "Models and Metaphors: Theory Mak ing and the Creation of New Knowledge," explores the role of theory in research. Hanstein examines the function of research in generating and testing theory and defines research as a creative process. In parts 2 and 3, ten dancer-scholars examine qualitative and quantitative in quiry and delineate the most common approa€hes for investigating dance. They also contribute study questions, research exercises, and suggested readings, which appear at the end of each chapter. These are in various formats as appropriate to the respective mode of inquiry and focus of the individual chapters. Quantitative research is based on scientific traditions that had their genesis in the Enlightenment and that seek some measure of predictability. The quantita tive researcher wants to know what is "true" for a given population or phenome non, and under what circumstances. In broader terms, Science seeks a research basis for understanding change itself, as one study supplants another in a chain of revisions. Qualitative research studies qualitative values (it stands to reason). These are Vll experiential values concretely defined as: educational, social, cultural and cross cultural, developmental, linguistic, aesthetic, mythological, symbolic, and so on. Because of the broad range of qualitative lenses for looking at dance, it is not easy to distinguish the few overviews that are most inclusive. We have tried in the chapter selections here to indicate some places to begin. Jill Green and Sue Stinson analyze differences in quantitative and qualitative models in their chapter on postpositivist research. They then present the features of some postpositivist (qualitative) models. It is for this reason that the method ological section of our text, part 2, commences with this chapter. Postpositivist research in dance provides a framework for understanding strategies that respect the qualitative nature of dance. In this chapter, the authors question claims to ob jective truth. Can there be a value-free truth, particularly in the study of human behaviors? Is reality found through experiment, or is it socially constructed? How shall we regard expectations of reliability and objectivity in research? What are the data of qualitative research? What are some postpositivist approaches and their goals? As Steven Chatfield takes a closer look at science in chapter 5, part 2, we see that its discoveries have been the products of qualitative leaps of imagination, as well as the results of quantitative research. Creativity operates to further science as well as art. Chatfield explores commonly used experimental research designs and their benefits for dance. We see through his presentation that problem solving in science is not a fixed and lock-step procedure, but an adventure to discovery. Qualitative methods are particularly applicable to dance in its multivalent na ture. Dance is qualitatively constituted in movement and experience, although it can be subjected to quantification through scientific methods and various forms of movement analysis. Even these tools, however, serve larger research purposes and are not ends in themselves. They bring selected aspects of dance processes into sharper focus. Fundamentally, dance is made up of movement qualities that are also human qualities. These imply our living body, its biology and aesthetics, its history and culture. What are some styles of reporting findings that respect qualitative dimensions of dance? What are inherent limitations of qualitative research? The two method ological approaches that admit qualitative and interpretive grounds in their essen tial operations are philosophy and hermeneutics. This book therefore considers them next. Hermeneutics is a field of inquiry involving both philosophy and literary theory (sometimes sociology, psychology, and religion as well). Concerned primarily with interpretation and the unfolding of significance, hermeneutics explores qualitative contextualization per se. As a particular kind of qualitative research, it studies the interface of interpretation with meaning-or how texts become meaningful. viii PREFACE Dances can be considered texts even though they are not written texts. Should this make a difference? Are there obvious limits to a consideration of dance as text? We know that dancing is not words, nor is it writing. Part of the distin guishing character of dance is that it is "nonverbal" in essence, yet in a broad sense, dances bear some similarities to texts. So the hermeneutic problem becomes one of understanding what kind of texts dances are. What are their inherent tex tual capacities (and limitations)? In what manner may movement performance be seen as a text? We know, for instance, that dances will bear the inscriptions of culture, history, gender practices, and even political persuasions. All of these con tribute to the "con-textualization" of dance. Fuller meanings emerge in the tex tual writings about dance that create a hermeneutic circling of meaning. The theorist, critic, choreographer, performer, and reader all participate (and some times do battle) in the creation of signification. Janet Adshead-Lansdale takes up the issue of dance as textual battleground in "Patrolling The Boarders: The Dance Text as Exclusion Zone;' Proceedings, Society of Dance History Scholars, Toronto, Canada (May 1995): 109-15. In "Dance In the Hermeneutic Circle;' Joann McNamara outlines the two branches of hermeneutics: "positivistic" and "anti-objectivist." The latter empha sizes understanding the essence of the text in its contextual character. This is the approach most often employed by dance writers and scholars, she says. Herme neutics is a crossroads where many contemporary strains of thought merge. McNamara applies this methodology to dance. Dance is an interpretive activity as it translates human movement in many different contexts and often merges texts syncretically. Consequently, dance and qualitative dance research are al ready in the "hermeneutic circle." In "Witnessing the Frog Pond," Sondra Fraleigh establishes a philosophical! aesthetic context for dance, made explicit in terms of aesthetic theory and its his toric tie to beauty and art. She explores aesthetic (perceptual) value across the boundaries of art and ritual. She also investigates how qualitative values arise in perception (aesthetics) and influence judgment (criticism). Can we speak of aes thetic truth? Such truths as aesthetics and history may claim are at least variant, as are those of science. Truths arise in context; we are not merely passive recipi ents of pre-established truths. Contextual, relational, and situational views assert that we are a part, and maybe the most part, of the truth we find. The terms of aesthetics have broadened beyond beauty and art with the evolution of modern aesthetics. Now they also encompass ritual, entertainment, play, therapy, and na ture, to name just a few. In this chapter, Fraleigh examines the term aesthetic as basic to dance. Her chapter introduces some gender issues that have consequences for dis course in dance aesthetics and phenomenology of the body in dance. In both IX PREFACE
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