A developmental empirical aesthetics of dance

The urge to dance is universal. From the moment we are born, we bounce, sway, or clap along when we hear a beat. Beyond the inherent infectiousness of rhythm translating into groove, and the pleasure such movement evokes, dance movements are a vehicle for conveying and for understanding gestural expressions of emotions across the lifespan. Furthermore, research documents how people derive aesthetic pleasure from both watching and performing dance. However, the ontogenetic development of the aesthetic appreciation of dance remains largely unexplored. Most empirical work in the developmental domain has used dance movements to explore the development of general emotional expressivity and understanding. Since aesthetic emotions are not disparate from everyday emotions, the research exploring those relationships between dance behaviors and emotional and social development can be considered a stepping-stone for first insights into the development of the aesthetic experience of dance in childhood. In this chapter, we present an overview of research exploring expressive dance movements with children, and discuss how such approaches can be adapted to investigate the ontogeny of dance-related aesthetic experiences. We further provide an overview of methods and open research questions for a developmental empirical framework of dance aesthetics.