Voicing connections: an interpretive study of university dancers’ experiences

The purpose of this study was to discuss the dance technique class experiences of students in a university dance program. Working within a post‐positivist methodological framework, I interviewed five university dancers. Using the lenses of phenomenology and hermeneutics, I compared and contrasted the women’s stories with each other’s and my own. Through studying dance, these women were at times able to find voice and identity. For each dancer, dance study was not a pursuit with a fixed end point but an ongoing process that offered unique rewards. It was also replete with contradictions, the most significant of which was the struggle between the need to achieve one’s own goals and the need to please outside parties, including teachers, choreographers and audiences.