ABSTRACT
Documented through discussion, e-mail, and Zoom meetings, Margaret Wilson’s conversational exchanges with Edel Quin, University of Chichester, details her journey as a dance science researcher and educator. Edel reflects on the ways in which the scientific method and sport science approaches provide a square framework – an important grounding in understanding and undertaking research. However, Edel’s mentorship style and ongoing research also look at the participants’ lived experience – integrating a qualitative and somatic approach that represents a rounding of these inherited corners, or as she notes, “a circling of the square.” Returning to her roots as a performer with Riverdance, she is now conducting research with her colleagues and the company management that represents the physiological demand of performance and how that aligns with the performer’s experience. This research program is one of the first to collect comprehensive data during live performance, providing ecological validity as an important aspect in making meaning from the data.
