The Movement Sciences and Dance Research: Past, Present, and Future

In the last decade or so, dance scholars and educators have stressed the need to broaden the core knowledge base of dance as a field of study, urging the dance community to study dance from a variety of educational and scholarly contexts, and to unite, rather than isolate, the arts with the humanities and the sciences. This paper aimed at tracing the development of dance research, from its emergence in the 1980s, to its present status, and suggesting future directions for dance research. Emphasis was placed on the shift from the early research studies in the medical science-related disciplines of anatomy, physiology, injury prevention, and body therapies, to the behavioral disciplines concerned with skill learning, more particularly motor control and learning. Examples of studies on dance expertise, imagery, and rhythm are presented. Indicators of dance as an area of investigation in motor behavior are its inclusion in motor control/learning texts, and the recent text on dance skill acquisition based on motor learning and development theory (Kimmerle & Cote-Laurence, 2003). The integration of motor learning theory into the study of dance is one example of a wider scholarly and educational context which may lead to significant and meaningful advances in dance science in the future. This paper argues that educators and scholars must continue to aim for new frontiers yet to be explored, and that motor learning has a tremendous contribution to make to the knowledge base in dance science.