Dance and Community Engagement in the Private Sector: An Empirical Study on the Current Trends and Challenges of Dance-based Community Engagement Practices

ABSTRACT

Community engagement has become an increasingly prevalent part of dance education. This study responds to the need for additional research on community engagement activities in private sector dance studios in the United States. Using a combined qualitative and quantitative approach, we provide an in-depth look into the current types of community engagement activities that studio owners are implementing in their programming and analyze specific motivations for conducting community engagement events in their specific regions and beyond. We also consider the challenges and obstacles that private dance studio owners face when conducting community engagement activities and aim to provide practical suggestions for those hoping to increase their activity in this area. These results lend ideas for future research on community engagement to continue to develop this field of study.

KEYWORDS:

• Community engagement
• private dance studios
• private sector
• dance education
• social activism

Acknowledgments

We thank David McGraw and Dr. Marissa Nesbit for providing immensely useful feedback on our survey questions. We are also grateful to the interviewees who participated in this study.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. For additional information, see National Endowment for the Arts, “Impact: Creative Placemaking,” accessed June 22, 2021, https://www.arts.gov/impact/creative-placemaking.

2. We define social activism as “an intentional action with the goal of bringing about social change” (Brenman and Sanchez 2014).

3. Due to the differing definitions of community engagement, we included a wide range of options in our survey. We understand the complexity of categorizing these engagement activities, but we are interested in knowing how dance educators in the field understand these concepts broadly, rather than judging whether or not the activity reflected current definitions of community engagement.

4. The 17 states include Florida, Georgia, Texas, North Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Maine, Alaska, California, Washington, Colorado, Ohio, Wisconsin.