Abstract
This thesis explores how the formal elements of participatory linked chain and round dances (movement vocabulary and dynamics, rhythm and music) contribute to the experience of a dancing person. Developing and applying an interdisciplinary, post-positivist approach produced an in-depth analysis of the associations between form and being. Informed by the literature in Dance, Psychology, Music and General System Theory, the research is presented as four empirical studies, each with a specific guiding question and results. The first study investigated the way in which six participants—all of whom dance Balkan dances recreationally—reported their general experience of dancing. Theory and method from Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) guided data collection (semi-structured interviews) and analysis, resulting in the following seven themes that span the intra-, inter-, and trans-personal domains of experience: aesthetic experience, autotelic (‘peak’) experience, being cognition, connection, context, growth and development, and self. The second IPA study focused on the formal aspects of dancing of which the same six participants were most aware, resulting in the following five themes: emergence, group formation, motion factors and Efforts, movement and music. To explore these themes in greater depth, the third study comprised an analysis of and reflections on the associations of form and being based on the researcher’s own, inside experience of dancing linked chain and round dances, using the vocabulary of Dance Analysis and Effort Theory to develop detailed descriptions of specific dances and to suggest how different dances can contribute to different ways of being-in-the-world. Synthesising the findings of the data obtained in the previous three studies, the fourth study resulted in a conceptual model that associates form and being. In this model, the musical/dancing self both responds to and creates the form of a dance, and it is this creative power that changes the dancer’s way of being.