Eighteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

In this project, I characterize the types of knowledge that scores – a method common in dance – can produce. As a choreographer in a well-funded Information School that is largely set up to support empirical projects, I have identified challenges that dance-based knowledge production faces to (1) being understood as knowledge upon which to build legitimate research, (2) being understood as offering value, and consequently (3) its ability to access resources. Responding to these challenges, I conducted a study that centers a non-empirically oriented method common in dance – scores – to characterize the knowledge that scores produce. This study finds that the types of knowledge produced via scores are highly situated, contextual, and well-suited to studying dynamic relationships. Further, the subject of score-based research often reveals itself over the course of research, making its outcomes difficult to articulate in advance (often requested by funders). By taking the crucial step of characterizing knowledge produced via scores, this study offers steps towards legibility of dance-based methods within empirically-oriented research institutions and funding infrastructures, without compromising the integrity of the approach to knowledge production that methods like scores can offer. Legibility invites opportunities for academic infrastructures to investigate how better to acknowledge and value knowledge that dance-based methods produce. Building on this study’s findings, future research can ask: what would it look like to offer funding opportunities for dance-based research comparable to those available for empirical research? How can academic infrastructures offer suitable approaches to evaluate dance-based research outcomes?