The employment of the scientific process to gain additional insight into a particular problem beyond the ordinary inquiry of the problem is commonly referred to as research. In fact, the term research can be substituted for scientific process. In general, research differs from other scholarly activities in regard to the methods and procedures under which the problem is studied and analyzed. Research further aims to enlarge the fields of knowlege already in existence. The researcher identifies a problem or an issue within his/her field of interest and then systematically undertakes to answer specific questions or hypotheses concerning the problem.

The scientific problem under consideration by the researcher must be a significant, well-defined problem as well as one that the researcher is totally involved in answering. This is a most important aspect of the research process because the identification and the statement of the problem directs all of the later activities of the inquiry. The statement of the problem is a roadmap of the territory under consideration.

Once the statement of the problem has been identified in clear, percise terms the researcher moves into the second phase of the research process, namely the proposal of the hypothesis or hypotheses. An hypothesis is a guess that the researcher makes about the problem and it provides a basis for the research, therefore it is a vital aspect of the entire study regardless of the type of research being undertaken. A hypothesis is generally a statement of expected relationships among the variables. Whether the hypothesis is accepted or rejected should not be the prime objective of the researcher. Statistically significant results are not necessary to add knowledge to our existing knowledge; statistically insignificant results also add to our knowledge. The hypothesis may be viewed as an “if … then …” type of relationship. If certain conditions prevail, then certain other things will result.

Popular dances encapsulate the aliveness of Africa's young. Radiating an Africanist aesthetic of the cool, these moves enflesh popular music, saturating mass media platforms and everyday spaces with imageries of joyful transcendence. This essay understands scriptive dance fads as textual and choreographic calls for public embodiment. I explore how three Nigerian musicians, and their dances, have wielded scriptive prompts to elicit specific moved responses from dispersed, heterogenous, and transnational publics. Dance fads of this kind productively complicate musicological approaches that insist on divorcing contemporary African music cultures from the dancing bodies that they often conjure. Taken together, these movements enlist popular culture as a domain marked by telling contestations over musical ownership and embodied citizenship.

This article examines Eleo Pomare's concept of vitality in his piece Blues for the Jungle (1966) as a black aesthetic approach to choreography. Vitality seeks to connect with black audiences in Harlem by referencing and affirming shared cultural knowledge, conveying an embodied epistemology of the US political economy defined by the lived experiences of Harlem: “Harlem knows.” Using a lens of diaspora citation, I argue that Pomare's choreographic citations of “vital” ways of moving and knowing in Harlem critique the terms for “proper” national belonging, while articulating diasporic belonging in motion.

I am a performer working primarily as a choreographer. My approach to dance making is multi-faceted – I design immersive containers for performance using sound, textiles, film, and paper.

This article focuses on an analysis of ways in which conflicts between dancing as an act of solidarity, a tool for self-fulfillment, or as a form of an interpretative transformation have been played out in practicing dancing derived from different “African” cultures within a Swedish context. This period embraces African-American theatrical jazz dance during the 1960s and the more contemporary interest in dances from West African countries. The examples articulate modes of cultural appropriation. The question raised is whether a focus on embodied experience of dancing can subvert the practice of appropriation, or if the two approaches are contradictory.

Dance critics often use information external to a performance to identify and separately evaluate the creative aspects of dance (composition of music and movement; design of scenery and costumes) and the interpretive aspects (performance by dancers and musicians; execution of scenery and costume designs). Their evaluation may also take into account production factors not directly perceivable in a performance, including the type of floor, rehearsal time, illness, and injury.

These critical practices are problematic for an anti-geneticist theory of aesthetic value, the best-known of which is that of philosopher Monroe Beardsley. As a way of legislating against irresponsible criticism, such as describing Schubert's music as “pathetic” solely because one “sympathizes with his poverty,” Beardsley will “…count as characteristics of an aesthetic object [the proper object of criticism] no characteristics … that depend upon knowledge of their causal conditions, whether physical or psychological.” Even some who consider this position too strict, excluding as illegitimate certain important critical discourse, agree that it contributes to a desirable goal, the exclusion of “clearly irresponsible criticism,” or “‘fantastic’ criticism that finds in the work any property whatever suggested by biographical information.”

The apparent conflict between anti-geneticism and these critical practices in dance can be resolved by distinguishing evaluation of perceivable performances from assessments of the continuing skills of performing and creative artists.

The young people who began to assemble in the New York dance studios early in the 1930s were seized by reformist zeal. They believed they were building a better world, and their idealism served them well, both as incentive when there were few other rewards, and as a sign to the world that they were to be taken seriously. For indeed, they wished to be taken seriously, and in those very first days, their legitimacy in the world of American art seemed certain.

As Doris Humphrey began to think more formally about the group that was to realize her works, she set forth her aims in a long letter to prospective members. She was enlisting them in a crusade. With the extraordinary mixture of crystalline practicality and inspirational ardor that she kept all her life, she foresaw a journey that would be all the more glorious for the obstacles they would surmount together. “I am first a creative artist, thirsting to see my conceptions made visible; after that I am also interested in developing individual talent in others, in performing for audiences, educating audiences, promoting the cause of Dance, making money, and establishing a Dance Theatre in America.” The order in which she set down these goals was not accidental. She wanted her dancers to understand that Humphrey-Weidman could pay virtually nothing — $10 a performance — and she frowned on the commercial theater as a supplementary source of income. “All group dancing in musical comedy or opera or motion picture houses” she placed in a “different class” — by implication an inferior one.

Nona Schurman, one of the foremost authorities on the Humphrey style and technique, studied and danced with the Humphrey-Weidman concert group from the late 1930s to the mid 1940s. Now a tireless octogenarian, Schurman still uses the movement principles developed by modern dance pioneer Doris Humphrey as the basis of her teaching and choreographic work. Co-author of Modern Dance Fundamentals (1), a technical manual based on Humphrey-Weidman principles, Schurman is currently writing a book on choreographic devices which will complement Humphrey's seminal work on the subject, The Art of Making Dances (2).

“The way to understand Doris,” Nona Schurman has said, “is to see her dances. We can talk all we want, but Doris is revealed through her work” (3). The clues to understanding the dances lie less in their specific performance or production features than in the technique and choreographic structures Humphrey employed. It is in the form of Humphrey's dances, Schurman feels, that the enduring essence of Doris Humphrey, the dance thinker, can be found.

Doris Humphrey was declared by Walter Terry to be America's “prima choreographa assoluta” more than four decades ago (4), and she is still recognized today as a master choreographer. This is perhaps due to the many college recontructions of her work and despite the fact that few companies keep her dances in active repertory. Besides being remarkably creative (5), Humphrey was enormously innovative, shaping choreographic change even before her launch into independence with Charles Weidman and Pauline Lawrence, through the development and extension of “music visualizations” with Ruth St. Denis at Denishawn. As an independent artist, she continued to revolutionize the art of choreography, creating a “library of masterworks” (6) which included dances in silence, dances with a vocal chorus and alternative sound accompaniment, and dances with speech, with music and with song.

A string band strikes up a rhythmic tune and a circle of dancers, one hundred or more, falls into the beat together. “All join hands and circle to the left,” directs the caller, beginning an old time square dance each Friday and Saturday night in several communities across Southwest Virginia. Old time square dancing is one of the two oldest regional forms of dance which continue to change through community participation. The other form is a dance of “rhythm-making with the feet” (Hall 1984–85,201), a solo dance known variously as clogging, flatfooting, or buck dancing. Old time square dancing typically begins with one large circle and with patterns for the whole group; proceeds to a middle section of one or more patterns for two couples, who form the “square;” and ends with one large circle or patterns for the whole group. Dancers use the term “old time square dance” to differentiate this community-based form from western club square dancing, which was popularized mid-century and is taught, with classes of increasing levels of difficulty, through a national organization. Both forms of old time dancing have evolved since the eighteenth century through the interaction of European-Americans, African-Americans, and Native Americans, and are performed to music of the old-time, bluegrass, country, or country-rock variety, depending upon the community.

Although there are dance types in Japan where movement is unaccompanied by song, dance to song comprises a major part of the various traditions of dance in its classical theaters and is widely found in the countryside as well. In some cases, of course, song includes meaningless words, or the voice is used like an instrument, simply to provide a musical element or beat to which to dance. But it has seemed to me that a unique aesthetic underlies a full appreciation of dance to song. What I have in mind is an associational process in operation when the movement of a dance is seen while one simultaneously hears and understands the verbal meaning of its song.

It may be true that since Japanese is not my native language I directed more attention, while watching dance of this sort, to the meaning of the song than a native speaker might.

Choreographic bodies are empowered by modes of expansion and transgression. Focusing on the energetic processes that lead to such empowerment, this article discusses the perceptual politics of trancelike scenes in the work of contemporary European choreographers and performers. As a body-mobilizing choreographic strategy of out-of-body and out-of-mind experiences, trance is closely linked to critical and utopian ideas, bodily transgressions, and crossed boundaries. While Mary Wigman treats trance as an incantation which contains the powers that it unleashes, contemporary choreographers like Doris Uhlich or Meg Stuart, expose the body to powers that nearly disintegrate it. As opposed to Wigman-style modernism, contemporary dance stages movement as a tremendous event that exposes performers and audiences to experiences of transgression.

This article examines how mayfield brooks uses spatial, discursive, and vestibular disorientations to intervene within anti-Black regimes of perception in their Improvising While Black (IWB) workshops, which draw from their ongoing life/art project by the same name. Drawing from insights gathered through my participation in IWB workshops as well as through conversations with brooks and other workshop participants, I examine what brooks's guided disorientations do, that is, what they produce kinetically, perceptually, and relationally among participants. I show how brooks's disorientations expand on Sachi Sekimoto and Christopher Brown's conceptualization of racialized regimes of perception by revealing a set of choreographic tropes that undergird those regimes. These include perceiving from a vertical posture, leading movement from the head, navigating based on visual cues while inhibiting responsivity to other senses, turning away from cultural and ancestral context, and relating to self and others as individuals. Drawing on examinations of disorientation within contemporary dance practice and critical race theory, I argue that brooks guides participants into disorienting improvisations that draw attention to, refuse participation within, and generate otherwise possibilities to this choreography.