One at a time, the dancers entered the small chapel and crossed the green shag carpet to kneel before the virgin's portrait. For the three days of religious fiesta, her image would be the focus of the dancers' offerings. A faded color reproduction, the portrait was not honored for its aesthetic virtues. Rather, its significance was invocative and evocative: through it, the virgin's presence was invoked and her story evoked.

About four feet high, the virgin's portrait rested on a papier maché mountain half its size. On a lower ridge of the mountain was a statue of a kneeling man, cast in plaster. The man's size was equal to the mountain's so that his head reached the level of the virgin's knees. The overall effect was that the virgin on high looked down with compassion on a tiny mountain and a larger-than-life man. It was the opposite of traditional images of Mary looking up at Christ on the cross. Here, the man looked up from below at Mary (figure 1).

Why choreography and architecture? Both are visual art forms based on three-dimensional design. Both create vocabularies in space in order to express or communicate. Both are highly collaborative: in architecture there is the marriage of site and structure, in choreography, of music and movement. Perhaps these intertwined relations are seen most clearly in Fallingwater's majestic cantilever over Bear Run Creek, and in Martha Graham's powerful response to Aaron Copland's score, Appalachian Spring. Both Fallingwater and Appalachian Spring are bound to their settings, yet each enriches the site or score immeasurably.

The similarities between choreography and architecture oscillate between the obvious and the contrived. Unlike architecture, dance is ephemeral and subject to human variables which are, by nature, unpredictable. Choreography is dependent on the human dancer and therefore subject to multitudinous interpretations and manifestations. The architect's product is as solid as the building, but the architect's design is no less spontaneous than the choreographer's. Both art forms are subject to gravity, to expression and to structure—for the choreographer, structure involves both the dancer's individual body and the group's compositional organization. Both are collaborative forms: music and dance, costume and movement partner one another as structural engineering must support the design, the site, the building.

In a 1915 editorial of The Ladies Home Journal, social commentator Dorothy Mills pondered the issue of the “woman question,” and in a few vivid sentences summed up much of the public's reaction to women's readjusted place in society during the Progressive era. What was one to make of the fact that women were declaring the right to vote, divorcing their husbands at a greater pace than ever and demanding fulfilling work outside of marriage? Said Mills:

In the 1950s, the world saw the birth, growth, and development of a new dance genre, the choreographic creations of the professional state folk dance ensemble (1). The genesis of what became a worldwide phenomenon of professional, semi-professional and amateur folk dance ensembles, with the notable exception of the capitalistic Western powers and Japan, began, in my opinion, in response to the extraordinary success of the Ensemble of Folk Dances of the Peoples of the Soviet Union, known in the West as the Moiseyev Dance Company, under the artistic direction of founder Igor Moiseyev. This ensemble was begun in 1937 at the onset of World War II, but its major impact began with the political reformation of the world in the aftermath of the war. During this period the U.S.S.R.'s direct political domination of Eastern Europe and popularity and influence in other regions of the world led to widespread emulation of the Soviet model of different types of institutions, including the formation of professional state-sponsored dance companies. This dance symbol became so crucial that a small nation like Bulgaria had seventeen professional folk song and dance ensembles by the 1980s (Ilieva 1994, 35).

One would like to think that dancers hold positive attitudes toward many forms of dance, not just their own. Maybe this is a reason why researchers have not been interested in studying the attitudes of dancers toward dance. However, there have always been conflicts (e.g., which teachers, dancers, dance schools, dance genres should be supported by grants and awards) among dancers in Finland, thus Finnish dance-policy groups have held discussions about improving cooperation both among dancers representing different dance forms and between dancers and artists in other fields. As a result the Dance Council of Finland was founded in 1980 as an organization with board members from various art dance organizations, folk dance organizations and the Finnish Dance Sport Association. The aims of the Dance Council were, among others, to increase cohesion among dancers and to improve the public perception, appreciation and funding of dance. The Dance Council initiated a dance magazine, Tanssi (Dance). However, according to Laine (1991), who was chair of the Dance Council and director of the Finnish National Ballet, the process was problematic and slow.

What kind of “symbol making behavior” is “dance”? At this point in history, are most scholars inclined to believe that “dance” is actually many symbol-making behaviors within time? “Dancing,” a human activity, occurs in myriad forms, both now and in the past. This warm-up accents the ramifications of adopting an historical perspective to describe “dance.” As might the Annalist Fernand Braudel, let me propose that dance media “should fit into time which carries life ceaselessly along” (Braudel 1980, 69). By “dance media,” I recognize every “dance” form which is tacitly legitimated within a social group. Every dance medium is a socially particular manner of constructing movement within a social group. There may be a scholar who argues that there is a dance medium which is not socially legitimated, but in turn, what data shows that such a medium exists? “Dance” should give way to dance media, a plural term.

Recently, the field of somatics has provided dance scholarship with a growing body of literature. Research has been conducted in the areas of dance science and education. Dance medicine and somatic education scholars have been able to help dance teachers find ways of using the body effectively in technique classes. For example, Glenna Batson (1990, 1993) and Sylvie Fortin (1993, 1995) have investigated the role of somatics in the improvement of technical dance skills. Further, Fortin (1995) has investigated learning and teaching theory as applied to somatics and dance pedagogy.

As a somaticist and educator, I acknowledge and appreciate the impressive work conducted by these researchers and educators. However, my current work moves somatics into another direction. I am interested in looking at somatic theory and practice through a socio-cultural lens. I am particularly interested in investigating how the body is shaped by society and the dance world, in which performers constantly strive for perfection.

As experimental research becomes more common in the world of dance, the ethical issues involved in conducting such research increase in importance. While several fields have identified ethical standards to guide researchers in their fields, standards for research with dancers have yet to appear.

In the absence of standards tailored for research with dancers, researchers might adapt the standards of related fields or use a personal code that seems appropriate to their situation. However, researcher backgrounds differ and researchers have a particularly strong interest in seeing their projects succeed, so there is no guarantee that every researcher will employ sufficient standards. Specifying an appropriate set of guidelines for research with dancers could be helpful to dance researchers, organizations that sponsor research with dancers, and dancers who participate in research. The purpose of this article is to propose a set of ethical standards for experimental research with dancers.