Introduction to Sword-Dance.com

Recent fieldwork: In De Kring from Dunkerque dance in front of the Antwerp Cathedral. March 2015

This document is a short accompaniment and commentary on my website sword-dance.com. The site is about European hilt-and-point sword dance and will eventually serve as resource for dancers, researchers and curious people everywhere. I envision the final site as a combination of a visual archive, sword dance encyclopedia, networking and advocacy tool, accompanied by academic articles on dance. The current material was collected during a year-long fellowship during which I worked with around 30 dance groups in 10 countries, learning, notating, and recording sword dances, and conducting interviews with dancers. I kept a blog at the time at starofswords.wordpress.com, which I have imported as a section of the current website. The site is a work in progress; while the structure is in place, I am still in the early stages of writing the material and uploading photos and videos, a process I anticipate will take over a year. I will also be writing here to introduce the Anglo-American Sword Dance Documentation Project, so stay tuned!

Next post will be on the responsibilities of (dance) researchers in the role of (dance) advocates. Check back Thursday!