Modes and Episteme of Communities of Dance Knowledge: Empirical-Qualitative and Knowledge-Theoretical Investigations of Analog and Digital Teaching and Learning Practices in Contemporary Dance

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Yvonne Hardt
• Subject Area: Theatre and Media Studies
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 507726012

The research project aims to develop a differentiated understanding of embodied modes of knowledge through a comparative field study of analog and virtual teaching and learning practices in contemporary dance. During the corona pandemic online teaching formats in dance practice proliferated. A comparative study of presence-based teaching and online formats provides an excellent opportunity to investigate processes of emergence, modes, repertoires and hierarchies of knowledge. Nevertheless, there has been hardly any research pursued on the relation between dance teaching practices and forms of dance knowledge. More so, studies on online formats are almost non-existent in the field of dance studies. So far, so-called dance knowledge („Tanzwissen“) is often conceptualized as non-verbal and mostly tacit knowledge. On the basis of a praxeological methodology, which conceives knowledge as always materially produced in a collective process (Schmidt 2012; Alkemeyer 2017; Hillebrandt 2014; Reckwitz 2008), this research project proposes a more detailed understanding of knowledge of dance that critically interrogates such positions of non-verbal and implicit dance knowledge. This praxeological approach allows focusing on dance teaching and learning in the complexity of the constellation of all participants (bodies, language, music, material, etc.) and to understand them in their bodily situatedness. In order to investigate the entanglement of modes, epistemes, repertoires, digitalization as well as institutional framings of dance teaching and learning, the project pursues a fundamental qualitative empirical research combined with discourse- and power-analytical perspectives. This will be investigated ethnographically within two fields: On the one hand an analysis of contemporary (semi)-professional training and educational contexts will focus on a broad spectrum of dance techniques and diverse formats of contemporary dance teaching and learning. The second field study will focus on online formats of dance. This involves both formats designed as online classes as well as informal ones, such as shared on TikTok or Instagram, including also practices of commenting, refining, further processing dance in the making and learning.The division into two empirical areas along primarily analog and digital is to be understood as a heuristic separation. The aim of the research project is to question such dichotomous constructs of analog/digital and to reflexively grasp dance teaching and learning as multimodal and multimedial events in order to re-configure discourses on bodily presence and the production of knowledge in dance. Furthermore, the project aims to analyze modes and epistemes of teaching and appropriation processes in relation to their social practices of inclusions and exclusions to discuss relationships of power and empowerment.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: United Kingdom, USA
• Cooperation Partners: Professorin Dr. Anurima Banerji; Professorin Dr. Kate Elswit