Creativity and Dance Education Research

Abstract

Research into creativity and dance education is increasingly in the spotlight as the community of dance education researchers is growing internationally. In the last fifteen years, the field has blossomed to include new cultural perspectives, voices and styles, and a consistently expanding range of definitions, epistemologies, and methodologies for researching the inter-relationship between “dance,” “education,” and “creativity.” Existing scholarship can be built on by exploring the historical perspective, moving to critically and thematically consider recent developments, and then looking ahead. In so doing, a range of definitions of creativity emerge which focus on cognition through to sociocultural perspectives and the post-human turn. Research into the facilitation of creativity is also pertinent and developing, including performativity and creativity pedagogic tensions, incorporation of technology and inclusion within teacher training, as well as a shift toward articulating creative and cultural dance practices themselves as key to understanding and developing creative pedagogy in dance. Also of interest is the range of methodologies that has been employed to research creativity in dance education and future possibilities in this area. Next steps in research include a focus on future influences from the ever-developing field of dance studies and its articulations of choreography and practice; from research into cultural and indigenous dance and emerging new multicultural ideas about creativity; from applications of advances in psychology and technological methods within dance science; and from the post-human turn in educational research shifting us toward more emergent re-organizations of how we think about and practice creativity in dance education.