The Dance of Words

This article is about language and lived experiences and analysis of movement of dance within Physical Education studies in Denmark with a special focus on how the language of movement and dance can be related to lived body and movement experience. The issue of the challenges and possibilities of expressing movement experience and analysis in words is discussed at the general level and exemplified in the context of a dance educational event where the movement theory of Rudolf Laban is applied. A central question arising out of this example of working with language and lived experience of movement is: What influence does language have on our way of understanding and communicating a dance experience? The article proposes that a bodily anchored lived language – through an ethic-aesthetic phenomenological approach – may supplement, expand and broaden a given professional terminology in order to articulate, communicate and unfold the experiential dimensions of dance.