Writing A Dance: Epistemology for Dance Research

Abstract

Over several years the authors of this article have had intensive discussions to find common ground in the topic they both specialize in: dance. Egil Bakka is a Norwegian ethnochoreologist, specializing in Nordic traditional dance/folk dance; Gediminas Karoblis is a Lithuanian philosopher, specializing in phenomenology and ballroom dancing. Our starting point was a philosophical question about the notion of dance knowledge and a shared worry about the empirical basis for many academic works on dance that other colleagues have also pointed to (Hoerburger 1959; Lange 1983; Adshead-Lansdale 1994; Grau 1998; Farnell 1999; Fügedi 2003). Bakka then brought up the widespread reservation against the use of film/video for the documentation and analysis of dance. We continued with a wish to clarify to ourselves the epistemological basis for research in dance, and somewhere along the way we started writing this article. We experienced that a dialogue in which methodological issues in dance research were confronted with philosophical scrutiny brought about a number of interesting perspectives. We hope that our exercise may be of interest to a broader audience. The aim is to explore how our different disciplinary points of departure—philosophy and ethnochoreology—can be brought to interact in creating a deeper understanding of our topic, rather than comparing the disciplines or discussing their differences.