Designing Dance into Qualitative Research

Dancers are increasingly seeing their art as a form of research. This is reflected in the development of new techniques, dance notation, and ever-expanding choices of topics that dancers deal with through their performances. Consequently, dance has become a treasure chest for researchers. In this chapter, I present a range of ideas for how elements from the world of dance can be adopted by researchers in business, management, and humanities. Adopting such elements from the world of dance is particularly useful when studying unconscious, affective, and aesthetic aspects of organisational life. For inspiration, I have included four different research designs drawing on dance. However, the possibilities are endless, and the reader is encouraged to be creative.