ethnochoreology

Ethnochoreology (also dance ethnology, dance anthropology, ethnic dance) is the study of dance through the application of anthropology, musicology, ethnomusicology, and ethnography. Ethnochoreology attempts to apply academic thought to the meaning and motivations of dance.

Ethnochoreology is not just the study or cataloguing of the thousands of external forms of dances—the dance moves, music, costumes, etc.— in various parts of the world, but the attempt to come to grips with dance as existing within the social events of a given community as well as within the cultural history of a community. Dance is not just a static representation of history, not just a repository of meaning, but a producer of meaning each time it is produced—not just a living mirror of a culture, but a shaping part of culture, a power within the culture: "The power of dance rests in acts of performance by dancers and spectators alike, in the process of making sense of dance… and in linking dance experience to other sets of ideas and social experiences."