Search Results (109)

This systematic review adopted a dual-perspective approach to examine how community dance is conceptualized and operationalized in the literature published between 2000 and 2026. The review was reported in accordance with PRISMA 2020, with eligibility and search concepts informed by SPIDER. Searches of five bibliographic databases and Google Scholar produced 423 records, of which 30 peer-reviewed articles were included in a thematic and cross-cutting narrative synthesis. Explicit accounts framed community dance through macro-level aspirations toward cultural democracy, equity, social connection, and eco-social sustainability. Implicit operational accounts emphasized micro-level relational, embodied, and pedagogical processes through which these commitments may be pursued, including process-led participation, de-centering of authority, challenges to normative body ideals, non-clinical well-being, and, in a smaller subset, trauma-informed principles. The realization of democratic and inclusive aspirations varied by context, facilitation, participant experience, and institutional conditions. Across both strands, the lived body occurred as an interpretive link between embodied knowledge, participation, and psychosocial well-being. Community dance is provisionally conceptualized as an anti-elitist, leisure-based, process-led participatory practice that seeks to create democratic spaces where diverse bodies share creative agency and relational justice may be pursued in practice. This definition aims to clarify the field’s conceptual identity, offering a cohesive epistemological foundation for future research, policy, and pedagogy. Full article

TikTok is a short-form video-sharing platform launched in 2016 by the China-based ByteDance under the name Douyin. Following its merger with Musical.ly in 2018, it rapidly gained global popularity. The platform has influenced individuals’ digital communication habits through its short video format and user-centric content creation capabilities. TikTok’s rapid access to its young user base presents significant opportunities for organizations and brands, but also brings risks such as data privacy and content security. TikTok’s dynamic algorithm prioritizes content based on users’ interests, enabling rapid access to a wide audience. A qualitative phenomenological research design was employed. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 influencers collaborating with brands on TikTok. The content was analyzed using MAXQDA Analytics Pro 24 (Release 24.1.1). TikTok provides significant advantages such as visibility, viral content, and engagement with young audiences. However, challenges include content moderation, algorithmic uncertainty, and payment and trust issues. TikTok should be considered a priority channel, especially for campaigns targeting young audiences. Influencer collaborations have a positive impact on brand awareness, consumer trust, and engagement. The platform’s user-friendly tools, trending structure, and short video format allow brands to run creative campaigns on a low budget. However, some structural challenges, such as content control and trust issues, necessitate a professional and transparent collaboration model. Full article

Background: Immigrant working women’s well-being is shaped not only by formal health and settlement services but also by everyday opportunities for rest, social connection, cultural expression, and participation in community life. This study examined how three community-based leisure activities were experienced by Farsi-speaking Iranian immigrant women aged 30 to 55 living in Ottawa, Canada. Methods: Organized in partnership with PAND Settlement Services, the activities included a group walk along the Rideau Canal, a Classical Persian dance workshop, and a group visit to the National Gallery of Canada. Data were drawn from 32 post-activity evaluation surveys, researcher field notes, and two follow-up semi-structured feedback sessions. Structured items were analyzed descriptively; open-ended responses and feedback sessions notes were analyzed thematically following Braun and Clarke’s six-phase approach. Results: Participants rated all three activities positively across enjoyment, accessibility, and social contact. Leisure was experienced as a meaningful break from routine, a source of emotional relief, an opportunity to meet other women, and a setting in which shared language and migration experience made participation easier and more comfortable. Sustained participation remained shaped by time pressure, caregiving demands, weather, transportation, cost, and access to clear and trusted information. Conclusions: Leisure activities contributed to the well-being and sense of belonging for the women who participated in the study. Full article

This study develops a theory of parental engagement by exploring the perspectives of both parents and practitioners within a socio-economically disadvantaged area in Dublin, Ireland. Using Constructivist Grounded Theory, data were generated through focus groups with participants involved in the family literacy programme Breakfast Buddies. Analysis resulted in the development of a substantive theory, The Dance of Engagement, which conceptualises parental engagement as a relational, non-linear, and co-constructed process. The findings identify three foundational tenets—safety, equality and trust—as essential conditions underpinning effective parental engagement. Four interconnected categories describe how engagement unfolds in practice: choosing to engage, co-creating engagement, connecting to engage and sharing. These categories illustrate how engagement is initiated, sustained and extended beyond programme settings into home and community contexts. The study demonstrates that personalised practitioner approaches, relational environments and shared ownership of engagement processes support greater parental confidence, sustained participation and reciprocal learning between parents and practitioners. The resulting theory challenges deficit-oriented and participation-based models of parental engagement by focusing on collaboration and contextual responsiveness. The Dance of Engagement offers a theoretically grounded framework with clear implications for policy and practice, particularly for designing inclusive family literacy practices to improve outcomes for children and families in disadvantaged communities. Full article

Dance and reminiscence have each demonstrated positive outcomes in adults with dementia, yet few studies have examined their combined effects on apathy, particularly older male veterans. This pilot study investigated the preliminary effects of a seated dance with reminiscence intervention on apathy, mood, engagement, and physiological outcomes in older male veterans in a long-term care community. Fifteen males with dementia (82 ± 5 years) participated in a 12-week intervention of 17 seated dance sessions incorporating reminiscence. Apathy, grip strength, body fat percentage, and body mass index (BMI) were assessed pre- and post-intervention. Mood and engagement were assessed pre- and post-session. Apathy significantly decreased from pre- to post-intervention, below the clinical cutoff of 42 (d = 2.20). Mood improved from pre- to post-session, with a higher mood associated with higher engagement. Grip strength improved significantly pre- to post-intervention (p = 0.018, d = 0.73), with nonsignificant changes in body fat percentage and BMI. In this single-group pilot study, seated dance combined with reminiscence was associated with preliminary improvement in apathy, mood, engagement and grip strength. Larger, controlled studies are needed to determine efficacy. Full article

Valentin Yakovlevich Parnakh (1891–1951)—poet, dancer, translator, critic, and indefatigable mediator between artistic milieux—developed idiosyncratic avant-garde poetics in which verbal texture, choreographic invention, and graphic inscription form a single communicative ecology. Focusing on Parnakh’s Parisian collection The Acrobat Climbs (Karabkaetsya acrobat) (1922), this article reconstructs how “low” temporal arts (cabaret, music hall, circus, pantomime) and the modernist revaluation of the body reoriented lyric practice away from a representational “image” toward a performative event and a kinetic sign. The argument proceeds from Parnakh’s struggle “to free oneself from the burden of the word” to the compensatory emergence of dance as an international, non-nationalized medium—at once existential (a “cry of the soul”) and formally experimental. Central attention is given to the author’s attempts to fix movement: the enigmatic “hieroglyphs of dances” printed in 1922 and their later clarification through more legible pictographic systems (“stick-figures”) published in the second half of the 1920s. By correlating poems, self-descriptions of choreography, and visual materials, this study reframes Parnakh’s apparent “obscurity” not as gratuitous zaum, but as a deliberately intermedial hermeneutic problem—one that presupposes translation between sign systems (word/line/body) as the very substance of avant-garde meaning. Full article

Taking the Liuyang branch of the Kong Clan in Hunan as a case study, this article examines how a migrant lineage associated with Confucian orthodoxy adapted to a heterogeneous local society and gradually transformed lineage identity into a broader sense of communal and national belonging. Drawing on fieldwork, genealogies, local gazetteers, temple inscriptions, and interviews, this study traces three connected processes. First, the clan used its recognized status as descendants of Confucius to obtain institutional protection, including tax and corvée exemptions, which helped stabilize population growth and local authority. Second, the Dahu Family Temple, sacrificial music, ritual dance, genealogy-airing practices, and modern clan activities show how Qufu-centered ritual codes were reworked through Huxiang architectural, musical, agricultural, and social rhythms. Third, in the modern period, practical statecraft, education, and revolutionary memory redirected lineage ethics from exclusive descent toward public responsibility. The case demonstrates that the consciousness of the Chinese national community can be generated at the grassroots level through the interaction of state institutions, local cultural adaptation, embodied ritual practice, and the reorientation of kinship memory toward inclusive patriotism. Full article

Differing perspectives on the ephemerality of performance have led to debates since the 1980s regarding its ontology. Sondra Fraleigh and Peggy Phelan, for example, believe that performance’s ‘only life is in the present’. Others have disagreed. For example, Rebecca Schneider believes that performance remains in the body of the spectator in a complicated manner and Miranda Joseph, drawing on Marxist theory, argues that performance is in fact material because it produces social relations which have material effects: they affect our thinking and behaviour. In alignment with Joseph, this text begins with the presupposition that performance, and, specific to this text, the object we might call dance performance—the dance performance event and its particular contours, in other words, the performance event as an entity which emerges in the space-time where/when the onlooker and the work meet—is material because it is social. I discuss two dance performance objects, my work Martyro (2011) and Jérôme Bel’s (2005) Veronique Doisneau, as (im)material affective objects. I examine each work individually, providing first a thick description of each in order to communicate how they used affect to connect to their spectators and to critique the contexts of their presentation, the worlds in which the Subject in each of these performances worked. Drawing on understandings and theories of affect (from Deleuze and Guattari, Gilbert Simondon, and Brian Massumi to Lauren Berlant) and political economy (including David Harvey, Cedric Robinson, Jeremy Gilbert, Ashok Kumar, and Katerina Paramana), I then argue that both works used affect to remind their audiences, their witnesses, of the power of revealing one own’s experience of ‘suffering’ as Subjects, whilst simultaneously critiquing the wider economies in which these works, these affective objects and their Subjects, are embedded. It is this production of affect, I suggest, that potentiated action for change, by affecting others’ perspectives and behaviours. Full article

Southern Chinese lion dance (nanshi) in Bangkok moves between temple ritual, community representation, school training, public festival display, and judged competition. This article foregrounds the diasporic and minority position of Teochew lion dance in Thailand. It examines codification as cultural negotiation, asking how a temple-linked Chinese ritual practice is made legible to Thai educational, civic, and sporting publics while remaining tied to community ritual authority and lineage memory. The study draws on public documentary traces from the 2000s–2020s and field-based evidence centred on Bangkok. Sources include temple and association commemorative publications, municipal school records, Thai cultural and competition reporting, heritage registers, transnational rule texts, interviews, observations, and community archival/display materials. The article first shows how huiguan, temples, and schools stabilize calendars, resources, and authority; second, how competition rules translate embodied repertoires into auditable norms of time, team composition, safety, difficulty, and scoring; and third, how trophies, certificates, lion heads, photographs, videos, and anniversary volumes turn evaluated performances into community archives of continuity, merit, and public legitimacy. The Bangkok case shows a diasporic minority practice being reshaped through the combined work of ritual governance, competitive codification, and community archiving within a Teochew-centred institutional ecology. Full article

This article examines how Confucianism becomes religionized through ritual performance in Korean mask dance drama (gamyeon-geuk), focusing on Hahoe Byeolsingut Talnori and Bongsan Talchum. It argues that these performances should not be understood only as folk entertainment or carnivalesque satire, but as ritualized forms that mediate divine and ancestral witnessing, communal publicity, and gendered moral evaluation. Within this ritual horizon, laughter, music, embodied movement, masks, props, and stage choreography distribute authority, visibility, speaking positions, and standards of judgment. Methodologically, the study employs multimodal critical discourse analysis of contemporary full-length performance recordings, treating language, movement, staging, costume, props, and audience response as an integrated semiotic field. Across both repertoires, female figures are repeatedly configured as silent or constrained speaking subjects, as visible carriers of moral disorder, or as expendable intermediaries within marital and status hierarchies, while male characters more consistently occupy positions of interpretation, judgment, and ritual agency. By foregrounding ritualized spectatorship as a process of moral common-sense production, the article contributes to debates on Confucianism as lived religion and shows how performance can stage critique while reauthorizing Confucian patriarchal order. Full article

Background/Objectives: Dance-based programs have been shown to support psychological well-being in later life, yet evidence remains limited for dance-mediated psychomotor interventions. This study examined the effects of a 12-week creative-dance-mediated psychomotor intervention on life satisfaction and positive and negative affect in community-dwelling older adults. Methods: This 12-week non-randomized controlled trial involved 34 participants (74.6 ± 6.6 years), allocated by convenience to an experimental group (EG) or control group (CG). The EG participated in a creative-dance-mediated psychomotor intervention (3×/week; 60 min/session; 36 sessions), while the CG maintained usual daily activities. Life satisfaction was assessed using the Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS), and affective experience was assessed using the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) at baseline and post-intervention. Results: No adverse events occurred; attendance was 89.8%. Within-group comparisons showed significant improvements in the EG for SWLS (20.4%), PANAS positive affect (14.3%), and PANAS negative affect (−13.9%), p < 0.05. In the CG, a significant improvement was observed only for PANAS negative affect (−11.5%), p < 0.05. Post-intervention comparisons between groups revealed significant differences favoring the EG for SWLS (p = 0.018) and PANAS positive affect (p < 0.001), with no significant between-group differences at baseline. Conclusions: Over 12 weeks, the intervention was associated with higher life satisfaction and positive affect in the EG compared with the CG. These findings suggest that this intervention format is safe and feasible and may support psychological well-being in community-dwelling older adults. Full article

Drawing on 964 field observations from typical community parks in Changsha, this study utilizes the System for Observing Play and Recreation in Communities (SOPARC) alongside Kernel Density Estimation (KDE) to quantitatively dissect the intrinsic associations between older adults’ outdoor activity patterns and micro-spatial characteristics. The findings reveal a pronounced demographic differentiation in spatial utilization. Specifically, female-dominated collective activities, such as square dancing, exhibit a profound reliance on central plazas with unobstructed sightlines to cultivate a sense of social security. Conversely, male users demonstrate a distinct preference for static social interactions, including playing chess or cards, within semi-enclosed and shaded spaces beneath a tree canopy. Beyond gender distinctions, age-related spatial anchoring is also evident. Intergenerational caregiving activities among the younger old cohort (aged 55 to 74) are exclusively concentrated around children’s playgrounds, whereas older old individuals and those with impaired mobility rely heavily on densely distributed micro-scale resting amenities. Driven by these empirical insights, this research contends that age-friendly park design must transcend generic accessibility standards, advocating instead for a “categorized spatial provision” strategy. By meticulously balancing open exhibition plazas, semi-private shaded units, and composite caregiving zones within a single park ecosystem, this approach can effectively accommodate the multifaceted health and social requirements of various older adult subgroups. Full article

This study investigates the effective translation of complex biological principles into viable engineering solutions within the field of biomimetic design. A critical challenge in current research is the “fuzzy front end” bridging initial biological observations and practical engineering applications. This gap primarily stems from the lack of intermediary models capable of abstracting complex biomechanical data into manufacturable mechanical paradigms. To address this, we propose a systematic biomimetic translation framework that redefines traditional crafts as “Empirically Optimized Biological Analogues” (EOBAs), serving as a logical bridge between biological inspiration and engineering realization. This study contributes by integrating the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) with the Fuzzy Comprehensive Evaluation (FCE) method to construct a quantitative assessment system. This system evaluates translation feasibility, engineering innovation potential, semantic interaction characteristics, and prototype manufacturability. Applying this framework to four intangible cultural heritages in Guangdong, combined with comprehensive expert and public evaluations, revealed that the Guangdong Lion Dance exhibits the highest biomimetic translation potential in terms of morphological clarity and dynamic behavioral characteristics. Consequently, we extracted the core principle of “embodied kinematics for communication” and developed a conceptual multi-segment biomimetic robotic prototype designated as “Kine-Lion”. Ultimately, this research provides a structured methodological reference for biomimetic robotic design, demonstrating that culturally abstracted biological behaviors can be systematically decoded into functional robotic structures. These findings indicate broad application prospects in the domains of human–robot interaction and biomimetic engineering. Full article

Recreational dance offers significant psychological well-being potential. However, traditional instruction emphasizes technique while limiting attention to nervous system development and embodied meaning-making. Despite empirical support for polyvagal theory, motor learning science, somatic education, and phenomenology, their systematic integration into unified structures is not clearly established in recreational dance contexts. This protocol integrates nervous system regulation, motor learning, and creative expression within structured Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing (ISTD) modern dance syllabus for recreational adults. It presents a 12-week integrated dance-mindfulness intervention addressing this gap through a three-phase structure grounded in neuroscience and embodied pedagogy. The intervention comprises eight standardized components delivered weekly. The randomized controlled trial evaluates intervention effects using the Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS), Depression Anxiety Stress Scales-21 (DASS-21), the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS), the Subjective Happiness Scale (SHS), and the Leisure Involvement Scale (LIS). Qualitative assessment via semi-structured phenomenological interviews (Weeks 8 and 12) and weekly journaling captures somatic awareness, nervous system resilience, technical confidence, creative expression, relational and social belonging, and embodied meaning-making. Intervention participants are expected to show significantly greater improvements compared to controls. Results will establish evidence-based practice standards for recreational dance and demonstrate neuroscience integration’s efficacy for psychological wellbeing and embodied meaning-making. Full article

Background/Objectives: Mental health issues pose a growing public health burden in aging societies, a challenge particularly accentuated in rural China. This study investigated whether the establishment of rural community organizations—specifically volunteer groups, agricultural cooperatives, cultural and sports clubs, senior dance troupes, and senior associations—influences depressive symptoms and life satisfaction among rural older adults. Methods: Data were obtained from the Well-being of Elderly Survey in Anhui Province (WESAP) across three waves (2015, 2018, and 2021). The final sample comprised a balanced panel of 511 older adults, providing 1533 observations. A two-way fixed-effects model was employed to analyze the data. Results: Empirical results show that the establishment of agricultural cooperatives was associated with lower depressive symptoms. Cultural and sports clubs were associated with reduced depressive symptoms and positively correlated with life satisfaction. Mechanism analysis revealed associations consistent with a dual “economic–social” pathway: establishing agricultural cooperatives was associated with greater economic resilience and stronger social bonds. The establishment of cultural and sports clubs correlated with higher mental well-being, accompanied by increased time spent in social interaction. Notably, volunteer groups and senior associations showed no significant association with mental health outcomes. Conclusions: Rural community organizations are critical drivers of mental health equity. Policymakers should prioritize support for organizations that are deeply embedded in rural daily life and integrate economic functions with social interaction to maximize mental health benefits for older adults. Full article