This text is based on a roundtable organised bythe five authors at the 2022 NOFOD conference inCopenhagen. As scholars and practitioners investedin the research and teaching of dance history bothinside and outside academia, we wanted to addressthe pressing issue of how ‘history’ is defined andpositioned within Nordic dance scholarship andpractices today. Dance, as we think of it and practiseit in our everyday lives, is far more diverse than theso-called ‘contemporary dance’ that the white authorslisted as scholars and practitioners in the conferencecall indicate.1 For this roundtable, we wanted to showthat dance theory and practice-led work in dance gofar beyond the Eurocentric idea of contemporarydance present in the conference call, and to advocatefor a more inclusive understanding of the practices ofmaking or researching dance in the future.

This article focuses on an analysis of ways in which conflicts between dancing as an act of solidarity, a tool for self-fulfillment, or as a form of an interpretative transformation have been played out in practicing dancing derived from different African cultures within a Swedish context. This period embraces African-American theatrical jazz dance during the 1960s and the more contemporary interest in dances from West African countries. The examples articulate modes of cultural appropriation. The question raised is whether a focus on embodied experience of dancing can subvert the practice of appropriation, or if the two approaches are contradictory.

The article intertwines historiographical analyses with research methods focusing on embodied responses to performances. It argues that dance reviews can be interpreted from a sensorial viewpoint, analyzing ways in which language articulates so-called kinaesthetic, or affective responses. The argument is based on theories of agency and embodiment (Noland). Swedish reviews from performances by Isadora Duncan (Stockholm, 1906), Artemis Colonna (Stockholm, 1903), and Loïe Fuller (Gothenburg, 1907) are investigated, and it is concluded that these kinaesthetic sensations are visible mainly in the language of female writers and spectators. Moreover, in arguing that an embodied spectatorship is important in order to understand the view of the period as a turning point in dance aesthetics, an emphasis is put on the importance of including the practice of dancing by both professionals and amateurs in this historical narrative. Besides embracing the emergence of the professional dance avant-garde, the interpretation focuses on the importance of a corporeal education of the audience. In particular, female audience members seem to, via a dance performance, identify with forms of sensory experience in tandem with visually evaluated objects of art. It is argued that the change in the female viewers’ perceptions had a potential political effect in that it gave voice to both corporeal sensations and women’s experiences in ways new to the public arena. Thus, it is in these experiences the important turning point in dance history emerges, rather than merely in the performances themselves.

This chapter queries the process of assembling, choosing and interpreting documents from which dance histories can be told. Amy Koritz has emphasized these circumstances in her cogent research on dance and literature in early twentieth-century British culture. From a British perspective, she addresses the historical stature accorded to Maud Allan in comparison to some other contemporary dance artists. To begin a life story with childhood reminiscences has long been a narrative convention. Most dance artists use it in the same manner as Loie Fuller and Isadora Duncan in order to point out how their future careers were decided very early in life, and they depict dance as a kind of 'natural' or universal force impossible to avoid. The Canadian-born dancer Allan exemplifies agency in a different manner. In an interview conducted by a Swedish journalist in 1908, Allan paints a nice and highly respectable picture of herself and her family, which artfully manipulates the truth.

Artikeln fokuserar hur danspedagoger beskriver sitt sätt att använda verbal kommunikation i dansstudion och baseras på intervjuer och observationer av dansundervisning. Som teoretisk bas används idéer om kropp samt teorier om metaforers betydelse för kroppsligt baserad kommunikation. Dessutom argumenteras för att pedagog och dansstudent är engagerade i en förkroppsligad version av kritisk tänkande, inom vilket talet är en av flera centrala delar.

De fyra pedagoger som intervjuas representerar olika dansgenrer och det visar sig påverka hur språkanvändningen uppfattas. En dominerande tendens är dock att man anser att bruket av metaforer har genomgått en historisk förändring. Från ett tidigare metaforrikt språk med referenser till bl a naturfenomen används nu allt oftare ett mer konkret, funktionsinriktat språk. Det kan vara påverkat av de olika danstekniker som tränas men också av dagens estetiska, koreografiska trender.

This article, based on interviews and observations of dance education, focuses on how dance pedagogues describe their methods of using verbal communication in the dance studio. The theoretical base embraces ideas about bodies as well as theories about the importance of metaphors in embodied communication. Moreover, it is argued that pedagogues and dance students are engaged in a corporeal version of critical thinking in which verbal language is one of several important aspects of the process.

Four pedagogues were interviewed, and they represent different dance genres, which affects the type of verbal communication used. However, they shared the opinion that the use of metaphors has undergone a significant change. The frequent use of metaphors with reference to nature has been exchanged for more concrete, functional language. Both the dance techniques in use and the current aesthetic trends in choreography could well be affecting it.

In this collaborative essay, we propose to examine what the adjective ‘political’ can mean and fail to mean when it is used to describe dance. We intend to analyse how different geographical and cultural regions have implemented the term, such as the very strong emphasis and nuanced discussions about identity politics in the USA versus a more ‘a-political’ idea in Europe, leading to notions about politics as immanent in the practice of dancing. Using diverse examples including the work of Faye Driscoll , Frédéric Gies , and Deborah Hay ’s Solo Performance Commissioning Project, we hope to create a dialogue about performance from different viewpoints, a kind of process geography of the political in dance. Such a dialogue reflects on the conversations we have had in our Working Group over the years as scholars and the very different methodological and theoretical orientations we have shared with one another.