The Art of Dancing in History/Research/Today

Abstract This combined academic-artistic keynote presentation was held at the 16th NOFOD conference: The Dancer and the Dance: Practices, Education, Communities, Traditions, and Histories. As a dancer and researcher in the field of historical dance, interpreting historical sources for dance is a great part of my work. Reflections on how we can approach past dance practices from a contemporary point of view, the artist and researcher’s subjectivity, and what factors come into play when interpreting dance in history are essential parts of my work. A turning point in my research, when I realized that I could not separate the researcher from the dancer, forms the starting point for discussing the importance of the researcher’s practice knowledge and bodily experience. Through examples from findings about dance and dancers in history, I am presenting a combination of three methodological approaches that acknowledge how the researcher’s experience may affect the upshots. Hermeneutics; interpretation and sense-making in meeting with the historical source material, tacit knowledge; implicit and undefinable in a dancer/dance-literate researcher, and practice-based research; acknowledges practice and an artistic relation to the material being studied in research on past practices.