Choreographic Interviews: Dance as Artful Inquiry

During a series of three 90-minute Choreographic Interviews , dance choreography became a way to theorize artfully about K-12 dance educators’ philosophical and practical understandings of the role of the body in learning. Choreography as part of an interview design helped to make visible dance educators’ relationship to movement and justice within the larger schooling system. This reciprocal process of artful inquiry created a space in which choreographing and performing dance were tools with which participants could imagine possible futures and ways of being. Positioning dance as enacting artful inquiry was generative and welcomed through this artful approach to qualitative interviewing. Using choreography as an artful inquiry method invited physical participation and built relationality through reciprocal exchange of movement and experience. Grounding the research experiences within our bodies through choreography during an interview informs the content and the ways in which researcher and participant co-construct knowledge and relate to one another during an interview context.