Why Dance Students Pursue Dance: Studies of Dance Students from 1953 to 1993

Those of us who have made a lifetime commitment to professional careers in dance have come to know the intrinsic rewards and difficulties of this field. Do dance students perceive these same factors, and if so, how are they influenced by them? This article considers these questions through a review of studies of dance students from 1953 to 1993. The research first presented in 1988, “An Interpretive Study of Meaning in Dance: Voices of Young Women Dance Students,” by Sue Stinson, Donald Blumenfeld-Jones and Jan Van Dyke, was the stimulus for this new dance student study and review of recent literature. In the Stinson, et.al. (1990) study the dance students' attitudes toward their future in dance were fairly pessimistic (1). In spite of their deep love of dance and their identity as dancers they felt powerless in a highly competitive field, thought they would never be good enough to be professional, battled constantly with bodies they considered inadequate, and regarded teaching as an activity only for failed performers. This article places Stinson's work in the context of previous studies of dance students' attitudes in a comparative overview of research conducted from 1953 to 1993. This paper also presents the results of a recent study of dance students conducted in nine colleges and universities in southern California.