“I dance” can describe an activity or say something about who a person is. When dancing becomes part of someone’s identity, personal experience interacts with how others perceive them. Different aspects of a person can coexist within that identity.
Psychologist Luca Tateo explored this in an Italian tango community through observations and four interviews. One dancer described others noticing her development. Another interview passage distinguishes dance and student life as different kinds of belonging. Here, a sense of self develops through relationships while remaining connected to other areas of life.
Belonging has several layers
Dance can also connect an earlier period of life with a new one. In a study involving nine students at an English university, a participant presented under the pseudonym Beatrice described salsa as a connection with her dance experiences before university.
Others described the shared evenings as strengthening their connection to the university. Dancing brought together students from different courses. These personal accounts suggest another possibility: a dance group can help shape someone’s place within a wider setting. A familiar activity acquires new meaning within it.
What movement can express
A sense of self can also become the subject of a dance. Three Black students at a US high school choreographed a piece about their experiences in physics classes for a case study. To express enjoyment and a sense of belonging they had worked toward, they used majorette, their preferred dance form.
The researchers connected the movements with the students’ explanations and their chosen titles for different sections. This made it possible to understand the story they intended to tell. Dance gave them a way to select and interpret experiences. The meaning of a movement was closely connected to the people creating it.
Personal expression has a history behind it. In 2017, Akram Khan described initially absorbing his Kathak teacher’s mannerisms and later searching for his own voice through contemporary dance. This was his personal development across different artistic influences.
He also connected his work DESH with belonging: his relationship with his father and his father’s homeland, Bangladesh, alongside his own British home. For him, dance became a place where these different connections met. In such accounts, a personal way of expressing oneself develops through engaging with inherited and newly acquired experiences.
The meaning people give their movements can, however, clash with expectations within a dance scene. Sociologist Magdalena Wojciechowska’s pole dance research in Poland also documented discomfort with prescribed images of femininity. One participant found demands to move seductively during her introduction to pole dance inauthentic.
Another emphasized how differently the same routine could be performed and how its expressive quality could change. This reveals a practical distinction between a movement task and a prescribed personality. Making a dance your own leaves room for interpretation; a particular quality of expression need not become a permanent role.
When the place of dance changes
The form of participation can change too. Dawn Bennett’s research with Australian dance artists revealed careers combining performance, teaching and other activities. Changes were described as loss, expansion or relief. A dance identity was connected to more than currently appearing on stage.
Career transitions have their own circumstances. They nevertheless open a question about a personal relationship with dance: what form of participation fits my life today? The answer can change. Dance can retain a familiar place in someone’s life while its extent and meaning shift.