Performative Methods as an Approach to Dance Practice

Abstract

The previous chapters have shown that the knowledge associated with movements is increasingly being thought about and that it starts forming part of legitimised discourses. It is receiving more attention both in the context of research and in the field of cultural policy. This refers first and foremost to their value for generating and gaining knowledge, a task that research has ascribed to itself, as well as its relevance in terms of how society functions and can develop. Thus, movement practices are now perceived as socially and individually constitutive repositories of knowledge. This is particularly true for dance practice, since this is where a significant number of complex processes for constituting reality take place. Sections 2.2 and 2.3 have already elaborated on this under the aspect of the intangible and Sect. 3.1 in regard to movement practices. Thus, dance practices can not only be considered as a scientific object of research or function as an instrument of cultural or educational policy, but can themselves be a way of accessing this knowledge in form of a performative method and as a lived practice. If one wants to gain access to dance processes from a scientific perspective, this first requires a conceptualisation specific to the object of study. Initial starting points for this have already been identified in the presentation of the conceptual work by the sociology of movement in Sect. 3.1 . Ultimately, such a conceptual foundation provides the argumentative basis for strengthening dance practice at a (cultural) political level. Thus, this chapter approaches methods for generating scientifically relevant knowledge about dance practices as well as in dance practice, based on conceptualisations already elaborated in the context of the research discourse in dance studies.