1. DANCE history research
Sylvia Roberts

2. TOPIC SELECTION:
“First you need a focus, which could be a question, an argument, a position, an opinion, or a point of view. Whatever it is, this stance must be stated close to the beginning of the essay and then developed, argued, supported, or perhaps even discredited along the way, eventually leading to some form of conclusion at the end.”
Veiled dancer, ancient Greek terracotta figurine from Myrina, ca. 150–100 BC. Louvre Museum

3. Dance history – scope OF TOPICS:
Makers: Dancers, Choreographers
Significant works
Purpose (ritual, cultural, social)
Context: time, place, participants
Form / Design elements
space, time, force / energy
types of movements
number of people, relationships / formations
Costumes, Lights, Sets
Accompaniment / Sound
Technological innovations (e.g. recording, notation)
Thematic elements
Supporting arts (visual arts, music, literature)

4. Dance Consortium. (n. d. ) Dance Timeline. Retrieved http://www
By Bboymor-E - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0,

5. Generating topic ideas
OVERVIEWS
International encyclopedia of dance
Moving history, dancing cultures : a dance history reader
No fixed points : dance in the twentieth century
Society of dance history scholars
Series: Studies in Dance History (books at SFU)
Dancing: The Individual and Tradition Included in Dance in Video “more than 250 performances and documentaries by the most influential performers and companies of the 20th century”

6. dance within Indian cinema
cultural significance and gender representation in documentary films featuring Indian dance?
Parallels to concert dance for the stage? Historical perspective / comparison
Who is making the films and their perspective on dance?
History of classical indian dance?
role of women in classical indian dance as performers, as symbols (objects of desire, representative of the sacred)?
dance within Indian cinema
By Vineet Radhakrishnan Eesha Deol - Bollywood Actress. (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

7. dance within Indian cinema
Do you need to focus your research to a specific type of dance? Or a specific case study?
How is dance represented?
Is the representation historically accurate?
THE DANCERS?
THE PERFORMANCE?
THE SETTING?
THE COSTUMES?
Is this consistent with traditional role of classical dance in indian culture?

9. Sources for Dance scholarship
Primary sources (experienced directly)
Autobiography / interviews
eyewitness accounts / reviews
choreography notes
Performances
Secondary sources (Synthesis / interpretation of primary sources)
Writings of researchers and scholars, including opinions, points of view
In-depth discussions, histories, critical overviews

10. Finding sources (books):
Browse books by subject heading, for example:
Dance History
Ballet History
Dance India History
Dance Europe History
Dancers United States Biography
Duncan, Isadora,

11. Finding sources (articles):
journal indexes for DANCE
** International Index to the Performing Arts **
Google Scholar
JOURNALS:
Dance research journal
Dance Research
Dance Chronicle
Conference on Research in Dance (CORD) conference proceedings
Ballet review (in print)
Dance international (in print)

14. Using one good article to find others
Shresthova, Sangita. “Swaying to an Indian Beat... Dola Goes My Diasporic Heart: Exploring Hindi Film Dance”. Dance Research Journal 36.2 (2004): 91– 101. Web.
Mine reference lists of scholarly sources
Citation searching using key sources and google scholar

15. Citing your sources
“You must have a separate page or pages with your bibliographic references at the end of the essay. “
MLA citation style (SFU Library GUIDE)
“A Dancer's Life: Act One.” YouTube, uploaded by Soleil Smile, 1 Oct 2010, Accessed 24 Jan
Dancing Program 7: The Individual and Tradition (DVD 7): Dancing: The Individual and Tradition. Prod. Rhoda Grauer, Muffie Meyer, and Ellen Hovde. ArtHaus Musik, 1993. Dance Online: Dance in Video, Volume I. Web. 24 Jan