Let's Dance! Elastic Coordination in Creative Group Work: A Qualitative Study of Modern Dancers

Coordination challenges are an inherent part of group work. They are perhaps more daunting for creative work because coordinating creative work requires allowing for dynamics that seem to “pull the group together,” or integrate, while also fostering dynamics that “pull the group apart,” or de-integrate. During an inductive study of modern dance group rehearsals, these interactions emerged as central to understanding how groups navigate coordinating creative work. Our emergent findings reveal how groups use autonomy and constraints to accomplish elastic coordination throughout a creative project.