Abstract

Dance is an art that includes not only art historical facts, but also a series of processes for dancers' body, choreography, and the creation of entire process of dances and their lives. In other words, dance is the art of embodying the experience and consciousness of the dancer as the subject, and embodying it through the physical body, and therefore, the existing empirical study which relies solely on the literature in the history of dance study is difficult to deliver a complete history. Oral history is a new methodology historical writing that overcomes the limitations of research methods based on literature centered documents. Oral history in the field of dance is that the dancer becomes the subject of the history of dance's narrative. The memory and testimony of a dancer can become a history, complement the missing parts of the documentary record, and amount to analysis and interpretation to attempt the history of dance from various perspectives. The history of dance through oral history analysis thus generates another view from the literature. The oral history is acted as a prism that can explore the sociocultural discourse of the time and the history of dance. As a new academic challenge for the history of dance field, I expect to be able to review the artistic, social, and cultural functions and roles of dance beyond the limit of existing literature-oriented history study and to be able to progress to various the history of dance.