Paper short abstract:

This talk will explore the possibility that dance is a field of expert knowledge that can be studied from the perspective of documents created by dancers and choreographers whose anticipated viewers/ readers are mainly other practitioners.

Paper long abstract:

That dancers know something is not in question in those places and networks dance artists work in professionally, the field in which they are employed to teach, create and perform. These activities are primarily associated with movement(s) of the body, and it is assumed much of what is known is acquired and transmitted through experience. This sets up the perspective that dance as a form of knowledge is of the know-how variety, tacit, intuitive (a felt sense) and embodied. The idea this knowledge can be transmitted through its documentation is generally resisted. Therefore dance documentation is often associated with a culture of fixation, validation and evidencing. However, during the last 20 years, a number of dance practitioners have been involved in making documents with the intention of sharing what they know with others, inside but also outside the dance field. The study of these efforts has tended to focus on the individual practitioners involved and the implications for dance knowledge being circulated in some kind of explicit form. Thinking of these documents as 'trade literature' (created by dancers for other dancers) introduces a space to consider the value of what cannot be made explicit and in support of the bodily entanglement of different ways of knowing.