Shape, Sense, Shift: Organizational and Disciplinary Changes in Dance Scholarship

This essay is a personal reflection on the 2017 merger of the Congress on Research in Dance (CORD) and the Society of Dance History Scholars (SDHS) into the Dance Studies Association (DSA) and more broadly on the development of dance studies in Canada. My observations of the CORD/SDHS merger come from the work I did as Chair of the Joint Organization Transition Ad-Hoc Committee (2015–2017), where I participated in discussions about the current state of the field and its needs, interacting with dance scholars from around the world. The essay then provides a broad overview of dance’s development at the post-secondary level along with key events beginning in the 1980s that I propose were part of the growth of dance studies in Canada.