Å gjøre dansen til sin : Bachelorstudenters levde erfaringer i moderne- og samtidsdans

Sammanfattning: The aim of this PhD-thesis is to explore bachelor students' lived experiences with different traditions in modern- and contemporary dance in a vocational dance education. The project is informed by Hans- Georg Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics and Max van Manen's hermeneutic phenomenological method. The material consists of logbooks and interviews collected over a longer timespan from 11 students at the Norwegian University College of Dance. The researcher herself is a dance teacher at the same institution. The thesis develops knowledge about processes in a vocational education in dance, upon which there is little existing research, by making the students' voices heard. With an emphasis on the students' experiences in their daily dance training, the thesis also sheds light on how modern dance, postmodern dance and contemporary dance can be understood as partly separate traditions, with different views on dance technique, the body and aesthetic ideals.The material is organised into four main areas, which is interpreted in four chapters: 1) Traditions in modern- and contemporary dance, 2) Learning in modern- and contemporary dance, 3) Being present in the body and in the dance, and 4) Transformation – becoming a dancer and dance teacher in modern- and contemporary dance. Each chapter has its own theoretical lens, of these the most central are: Gadamer's understanding of tradition, play and Bildung, Peter Jarvis' theory of human learning and some selected themes from Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology.The contributions of the thesis are connected to 10 main themes that elucidate central characteristics of the students' lived experiences during their education. The last main theme, to make the dance one's own, characterises the students' transformation during the education, and is also central to the other main themes. The research identifies three levels in how the students make the dance their own: The first level, incorporating movements, technique and style, details the students' daily practices of learning dance. The second level, feeling ownership of the dance, the body and one's own expertise, concerns a deeper change over time where the students develop their own bodily knowledge in dance. The third level, making a repertory of practices one's own, is focused on the change in the students' relation to traditions in modern- and contemporary dance, and how they incorporate parts of the contemporary dance tradition into their own lives and self-understanding.