Dancing the Data: A Duo-Ethnographic Exploration Toward Dialogic Reflexivity in Qualitative Data Analysis

Breaking Free From Assumptions Through Embodied Knowledge

Arts-based practices in research open spaces for inquiry and knowing that stretch us beyond our comfort zones and cognitive ways of knowing (Nissley, 2010). The arts engage us in acts of embodiment that interconnect thinking with feeling (Bresler, 2008). Embodiment is the seamless interdependence of the body and mind: the “integration of the physical and the biological body and the phenomenal or experiential body” (Bresler, 2008, p. 231). Bresler contends that “to work in a paradigm of embodiment is not to study anything new or different, but . . . to address familiar topics . . . from a different perspective” (Bresler, 2008, p. 231). Similarly, Snowber (2018) writes that “embodiment is the interconnection of body, mind, heart, imagination” and so forth. Embodiment is not just about the body, but about living from integrative place of body, heart, and mind. Research based on embodiment can this serve to break the mold of traditional ways of knowing, opening space for multiple perspectives and voice (Snyder, 1998).

As a critical approach, embodied knowledge help to address the challenge of “assumptions” (Bresler, 2018), which are innately inherent in the analysis of qualitative data. According to Brookeld (1995, in H. Brown & Sawyer, 2016) “we are our assumptions”; consequently, “becoming aware of the implicit assumptions that frame how we think, and act is one of the most challenging intellectual puzzles we face in our lives” (p. 2). Using arts-based methods to create interactive spaces that evoke embodied experience provides researchers with tools that can serve to make visible assumptions and to challenge those assumptions.

Bresler (2018) has given considerable thought to this challenge and suggests that challenging assumptions is about inviting space for the act of “unknowing.” In her thesis, she contends that we, as a research and educational community, have developed a fixation with the need to know, which often leaves us at the superficial level and surface findings. As academics, entrenched in our own obsession with knowledge and expertise we limit our ability to see. Going deep beneath the surface requires that we “leave behind the grids of the known” (p. 653). Herein lies the power of both transdisciplinary spaces and embodied knowledge through artistic practices that has the potential to catapult our center of gravity to new spaces beyond the known.

The interpretive nature of qualitative research calls for researchers to engage in self-reflexive praxis to identify their assumptions and develop awareness about the implications of interpreting the data from a broader perspective than self (N. Brown, 2019). Reflexivity as a praxis, positions the researcher in relation to the data (N. Brown, 2019), suggesting that there is necessarily an interactive and co-constructive process of meaning-making that takes place during and through qualitative research (Finley, 2003).

This view of meaning-making and knowledge as interactive and co-constructed challenges traditionalists’ perspectives of meaning as shaped by the written and spoken word. Framed within embodied knowledge (Tanaka, 2011), language is expanded to include a variety of ways of knowing. Muntanyola-Aura and Kirsh (2010) talk about the unique interaction that the body and mind can offer a thought. In their words, the body can serve as a “simulation engine or as a representational system, that allows thinking to interactively formulate thoughts about a domain. Thought can be more body-centric” (p. 1). This is in line with Kirsch’s (2011) writings on physical thinking. For example, music creates an interactive space, as both performer and listener, that engages mind, body, and soul that opens us to new experiences. Through the interaction between the cognitive and the experiential, music opens us to new insights and ways of perceiving. When applied in a research context, music can serve to create structures for listening, shape patterns and forms through melodies that mirror the date, and create a disequilibrium through dissonance to stimulate thought.

Evans (2009) coined the phrase, “Languaging” to suggest that language is something complex, in which we are immersed (i.e., being in the language) and thereby, experiential.

In viewing language as emergent from the experience, and observed awareness of these interactions, my conjecture would be that how we handle language within this complex of operations, is also key. Being, doing, observing, describing can then all be seen to be integral to one another, and thus the way any one of these operations is conducted, will influence the nature and development of the reflexive discourse between them. (p. 210)

His concept of “languaging” connects to the power of the arts in research to create an interactive space that is rich with a complex language derived from various art forms. Using arts-based methods to create interactive spaces that evoke embodied experience provides researchers with tools that can serve to make visible assumptions and to challenge those assumptions (Bresler, 2008; Eisner, 2008) through continuous inquiry and exploration (Irwin et al., 2018).

Dialogic Reflexivity Through Arts-Based Practice

One of the unique elements of arts in research offers researchers the opportunity to disrupt perspective through their participatory practice and reconceptualize perception from their new embodied experience (Rashid, 2018). This strength is promoted as an evolutionary development in qualitative research, extending several methodological periods, including the narrative turn, the reflexive turn, the relational turn, and the creative turn (N. Brown, 2019). The arts promote dialogic-reflexive (N. Brown, 2019; Finley, 2003) processes through embodied knowledge (Tanaka, 2011), highlight multiple meanings, and question norm-based traditions.

Engaging in dialogue that includes self-reflexivity (N. Brown, 2019; Hertz, 1997) creates consciousness about who we are in relation to one another, including our ideological perspectives and cultural backgrounds. Bakhtin (1986) contends that dialogue can serve as an important framework for knowledge construction. Moreover, Brown and Sawyer (2016) argue that dialogue is important to move acts of reflexivity from the solitary to the collective, suggesting that new perspectives can be stimulated through interaction. The interactive nature that emerges through the arts provides a vehicle for the researcher to interact and challenge assumptions, both in terms of data collection, analysis, and representation.

H. Brown and Sawyer (2016) connect embodied knowledge to the dialogic nature of the arts. Dialogic practice, they suggest, stimulates “critical thinking and meaning-making in relation to new images and narrative” (p. 4). The key to dialogic reaction is in new structures that emerge to stimulate new perspectives. By promoting a dialogic space, the arts can challenge assumptions, both in terms of data collection, analysis, and representation. Bresler (2018) echoes this, suggesting the power of the dynamic between resonance and dialogue that emerges through ABR. “Resonance mobilizes perception and engagement, enabling a bridge between the inner and the outer [self]” (p. 659).

One of the unique elements in arts-based disruption is that the researcher is a participant in the disruption, experiencing its effects and reconceptualizing perception from their new embodied experience. This is in line with Dewey’s notion of reflexivity that emerges from learning by doing. Leavy (2015) states that the dialogic, embodied nature of ABR opens the doors not only for questioning assumptions and expanding perception but also for addressing the power balance between the researcher and the researched. The arts, she suggests, have the power to challenge dominant stereotypes, provoke, evoke, invite participation, and stimulate critical thinking. Engaging in dialogic reflexivity is often strengthened by the use of guiding questions (Bresler, 2018). According to Bresler, this helps to shape both what we look for in our investigation and how we engage with it. The kinds of questions then become relevant to challenging the dominant views held within the cells of our mind.

Applying Art in Research

Leavy (2015) explores the array of artistic forms and their application to research. In this article, we highlight music and dance to reflect our own artistic backgrounds applied in this study. Music’s role in society has been central for centuries, serving as a social function as well as in healing (Stevens, 2012). Music is also used in education to stimulate learning, facilitate expression, and develop skills in listening, collaboration, and teamwork (Snyder & Cooper, 2015). Musicians have a unique ability to listen and interact with sounds (Rostron, 2003; Sorsa et al., 2018). They are trained in fine-tuning their listening skills to identify small nuances. As Leavy (2015) suggests, “music-based approaches to research can help researchers access, illuminate, describe and explain that which is rendered invisible by the research practices” (p. 128). She quotes Huxley who said that “after silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music” (in Leavy, p. 128).

Bresler (2009) cites that music can help researchers build their listening skills, which is essential in qualitative research. The language of music, based on melody, harmony, rhythm, tonality, form, and dissonance can be transferred to everyday settings to help researchers fine-tune their skills in listening (Bresler, 2009; Snyder, 2019). Leavy (2015) suggests that the components of music can help qualitative researchers enhance their perception, conceptualization, and communication. She also recommends that researchers consider the above categories when analyzing interview data.

Dance is another art form that can serve well as a research methodology, according to Leavy (2015). Similar to musicians, dancers use form, structure, and rhythm to express themselves and to integrate the body as a place of knowing (Snowber, 2018). As a form of knowing, dance has been described as physical thinking; a process of using the body as an instrument of cognition (Kirsch, 2011). Muntanyola-Aura and Kirsh (2010) talk about the unique interaction that the body and mind can offer a thought. In their words, the body can serve as a “simulation engine or as a representational system, that allows a thinker to interactively formulate thoughts about a domain. Thought can be more body-centric” (p. 1). Leavy (2015) refers to the work of Clark-Rapely (1999) who suggests that dance “is a form of transformative human action that expresses an individual’s being . . . and can thus support, rather than alienate communal relations” (Leavy, p. 159).

In Snowber’s work (2018), she writes about the living, moving nature of dance as a way to integrate the body with places of knowing. She writes, “We are embodied beings, living through and in our bodies” (p. 247). Accordingly, “the choreographer, the dancer and the improviser have long known that dance making is a creative process, one of questioning, sifting, forming and unforming, making and remaking, and always a place of discovery” (p. 253). Her view supports the power of embodied knowledge to challenge assumptions and decenter/re-center perspectives in research.

Combining music and dance in a duet enriches the embodied experience through the interaction of different forms of expression. The use of a duet, as performed by distinct art forms, adds perspective in unique ways. It stimulates a dialogic-reflexive component that can strengthen the researcher’s ability to challenge assumptions that lie within their own perspectives. Both music and dance use form and rhythm to express and communicate. Dance also introduces movement to the duet, whereas music introduces tonality and melody. Interacting in this expanded space opens the possibilities to stimulate thought and develop a more complex interaction that may serve to reflect the complexities embodied in human experience (as derived from the qualitative data). In so doing, the improvisational duet has the potential to become an embodied act of dialogic-reflexivity.

Process

The experiment was carried out over a 2-day period during which improvisation and reflective dialogue were integrated. The experiment was guided by the question, “How can embodied knowledge (as created through music and dance) inform a deeper understanding of the concept, ‘Deviance,’ which was identified in the initial qualitative analysis of the interview data?” Two practices were included in the experiment: (a) free improvisation, and (b) dialogic as reflective practice. Improvisation is the creation of something without a preconceived plan (Nunn, 1998). Self-reflexivity is a process used by researchers to mediate the balance of position between the researcher and researched to lend voice to the respondents (Russel & Kelly, 2002). Dialogue is defined as a conversation without sides (Isaacs, 1999). It reflects a communication paradigm in which “process” is given more weight than “outcome.”

The improvisation was approached as a dialogue between the flute and the dance. The function of the flute was to listen in, feedback, mirror, and challenge what was performed in the dance. The function of the dance was to express different aspects of the stories shared by the interviewees that reflected their journeys to high positions in leadership.

Data Creation

Four dances were completed and recorded. The first two dances (warm-ups) lasted between 3 and 5 min in length. The second two dances (reported in this article) lasted between 7 and 15 min. Following each dance, a reflexive dialogue was held, during which we explored our embodied experience as it related to examining more deeply the qualitative research data from the interviews. We worked to understand each other, what we were experiencing, communicating, and what more we might need to add to our free improvisation to take us into the deeper levels of data analysis with the interviews. Among the elements that we explored were space, rhythm, listening, and collaboration. Of significance was to understand how our different artistic forms could be in dialogue with one another and integrated to support the analytical process.

The Butterfly and the Hawk

Our experiment began with two warm-up improvisations, the Butterfly and the Hawk, as a way to develop an understanding and process for working (Figure 1). Among the elements that we explored were space, rhythm, listening, and collaboration. Of significance was to understand how our different artistic forms could be in dialogue with one another and integrated to support the analytical process.

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Figure 1.

A sample from the second dance of the Hawk.

After each of the dances, which lasted approximately 3 min each, we engaged in a reflective dialogue about our experience and process. We worked to understand each other, what we were experiencing, communicating, and what more we might need to add to our free improvisation to take us into the deeper levels of data analysis with the interviews (Figure 2). For example, Liz reflected,

“I couldn’t see your eyes open, but I could feel you were following me with your music.”

“Interesting,” I said, “I found that my breath couldn’t keep up with your movements. I wanted to be able to stay inside your movement. But I needed to breathe, which meant that I would break up the pattern. And then I wondered how I am going to break up the pattern and how am I going to affect you if I break up the pattern. You have a longer breathing rhythm by movement than I do by breath. My physical movement could be with you, but my breath doesn’t have that capacity.”

“Well, I can elongate my movements.” “I could just do this” [and she stretched her arms long and held them for an extended period].

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Figure 2.

Image from our dialogic-reflection about our process.

During our reflective dialogue, we pondered the question: Should you adjust? Or if one should adjust, how does one adjust? In sculpture and painting, there is always a positive and negative space created by white and black. In music, it is created by silence or sound. A duet is about give and take, sound and silence, white and black. And it’s all about a kind of space in relation to something else. Silence is its own space. Movement or non-movement is its own space. This kind of reflective dialogue was important to free our improvisation and to give a kind of common language and structure to the abstract.

The Deviance Improvisation Part 1

After the first two improv dances, we had begun to develop a way of working together through improv and were ready to embark on an attempt to analyze the data. Liz began with a reflection about the kinds of questions she was grappling with in the data, and decided upon a choreography to start her off. Her topic was exploring women in high leadership positions and how, and if, they deviate from the norm.

To get inside the stages and experiences that the women leaders went through to achieve their high appointments over the years, the dance began low, on the floor, spiraling up over time to reflect the stories of the women interviewees and their rise to power. The spiraling elements reflected their nonlinear journeys. The music began on the lowest tone of the flute and meandered up the scale, slowly, spiraling with the dance, and interacting with the movements as they emerged becoming intertwined. At times, the dance returned toward the floor, representing elements of the backlash to success that many of the interviewees experienced along their journey, reflecting once again the nonlinear dimensions for women to achieve positions of power.

As the dance progressed, wandering sideways and upward to success, the tonality in the music shifted from one of a heavy burden to lightness and inspiration, reflecting the inner strength that was evident in the stories of the interviewees. The dance began to reflect the steps that the women leaders took on their journey to rise through the ranks, emancipating their power. Pushing through power plays, moving barriers, claiming space (Figure 3).

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Figure 3.

Exploring boundaries in the first deviance dance.

The dance ended with upward movements and large steps forward that reflected a sense of arrival shared by the women leaders when they had achieved a certain position in the ranks. And the end of the dance, we both found ourselves inspired to want to climb more and continue spiraling upward. The dance ended after 5 min 37 s. We paused for a moment, soaking in the experience. Liz began to feel that she was entering the data but needed to have more with her if she was going to dig deeper into the complexities of deviance. She began to reflect out loud:

“Let’s get a theme, otherwise I am just doing random movements. How about the concept of encounters. I feel the need to get more percussive. Aggressive. Assertive.”

“Why these themes?” I asked.

“I think these ideas can help me get inside the concept of deviance, that I perceive is a part of the experience for women in high leadership positions; that they ‘deviated from the norm to get to where they are today.’”

The Deviance Improvisation Part 2

And so began the dance for a second time. Just like the first dance, this one also started from the floor to represent the journey of the women in leadership. Yet this time, with more focus on the theme of encounters and the expression of percussiveness, which is related to the concept of deviance that was identified in an earlier analysis of the data. The dance evolved around the elements of struggle, reflected in more percussive gestures, and deeper emotional movements, reflecting frustration, fear, at times confusion, questioning, and testing possibilities (Figure 4).

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Figure 4.

Exploring the concept Deviance in the Deviance Dance 1.

The music followed the rhythm of the dance more closely this time, speeding up with quick movements and slowing down with softer movements. When the moves were directed upward, so too followed the music. This close interaction with the music mirroring the dance was intended to give space for reflexive improvisation as the dancer navigated insights into the themes of encounter, percussive-aggressive-assertive (Figure 5).

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Figure 5.

Navigating emotions in the deviance Dance 2.

After 5 min 43 s into the improvisation, Liz stopped abruptly, looked, and said, I need to make noise! And she started to stomp on the floor in a percussive dance as she grasped her fists and pounded against the air above her head. The flute followed with a crazed melody, bouncing off the percussive steps of the dancing feet, and the wildly swirling hands. The percussive gestures repeated themselves, each time with new elements from facial expressions that illuminated a sense of inner craze (Figure 6).

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Figure 6.

Illustrating the climax and resolve in the deviance dance.

After the third such gesture, the dance turned toward a kind of resolve: the energy of frustration had been identified and released. The movements began to spiral back down through a series of fighting gestures that ended in a calm. The flute followed as the arms extended softly while the body continued to spiral out of the percussive encounter, landing in a sense of peace and calm. The movements became elongated as the dancer circled through the entire floor space with strength, reflecting a kind of empowerment that appeared to engulf the women in leadership in the study. The dance ended shortly after (at 7, 23 min), and there began our deepest reflection that also served as the pivot point in the analysis.

Liz shared,

“There is something missing, I am not being honest.” “There is something that I really couldn’t express.” Could you understand that while I was dancing?

I think so. I found myself playing in a chromatic scale for a while and then I realized that I needed to change my own playing to also help you to come out. I saw that your gestures were ready to move out and expand to celebrate the women’s power. If I were to write the music, it would be similar to Copeland’s Appalachian Spring, where the music just opens up.

“I felt that too,” shared Liz “It was really a sense of freedom to be whoever you are, wherever you are. That’s one of the powerful findings from the data that I began to see more clearly.”

I also realized for myself (Liz continued) that I couldn’t dance out something like “Deviance” by myself. I needed to push against someone. In the process, there is a lot of misunderstanding; hurt and fear. I was trying to do the experimentation. But I couldn’t get to it. Part of it was that the music didn’t feel like it fit the deviance that I was feeling inside. That was a place perhaps that the music could have stopped. I could have just pounded out alone because there is nothing gentle about that. The other thing is that I don’t dance percussive.

I reflected upon this:

I wonder, if you were to do a feministic self-reflexive process on your research you could explore further your notions of deviance. What you are describing is a typical perception what is deviance and how does it occur.

Yes, I think so. It feels like that it is how it would be to be deviant. I was thinking about people who are deviant in society as I was dancing.

What if that’s not what women in high positions actually go through? What if there is another picture in the data that is not illuminated because we are guided by that one perspective (traditional) of deviance. If we keep the traditional notion of deviance, we assume that the women in your study must have gone through hell, must have gone through battle. But did they?

Yes, some of them really did. Some of them didn’t. Some talked about being moved in to positions of power because of their networks.

You described in your dance needing to have something to push against. Did the women also describe things that they pushed against?

Yes, like husbands. But some of them weren’t willing to share those kinds of details. They just talked about the straight path and mentioned there were battles, but not what they were.

It’s interesting to hear you reflect about the improvisation and how parts didn’t work for you or some elements that were missing. Might we examine and ask questions about the things that were missing or didn’t work to see if there are new questions that you can bring to your analysis?

That’s a good question. And what you asked me about “Did all the women go to battle” is one of those kinds of questions. And did they feel they were getting out of a comfort zone? Did they feel free? When you discover that you are not the norm, what happens?

Our conversation continued along this path to explore the concept of “being different.” Over time, the dialogue moved back to the start of the conversation, to deviance, recognizing that the concept of deviance needed to be further explored and considered from multiple lenses. We also returned to our improvisation to understand it more deeply, including perhaps hidden elements that we didn’t consider and their potential implications to explore deviance. Liz began reflecting on different movements that she could have chosen to explore more in-depth her own inner experience with the concept of deviance. We also began to reinterpret some parts of our interaction that we initially determined to be problematic. We reflected, for example,

If we go back to our improvisation, the music tried to follow the dance. At times it was disturbing because it wasn’t in sync with, for example, the stomping. But how might that music then represent something else that is a part of the bigger picture?

Yes, the music that was playing was a kind of constancy. The world goes on, and here I am stomping, but the music kept going.

Yes, that right, and that’s how it should have been. I just should have kept going and stomping and been even more out of sync with the norm (a sign of deviance).

We began to reflect on the experience and power of the improvisation to access emotions, assumptions, and perceptions. It became an analytical device embedded within an ethnographic study, which stimulated us to ask questions of one another, of our interpretations, and possible alternative interpretations as well:

How about you? You weren’t playing deviance. How would you do that?

If I think about deviance, and I take the flute and it has a pureness in its sound, we expect the purity to be there, we expect the melodies to be beautiful. So if I were to play “deviant,” I would alter the expectations that we have the flute. Change keys in the middle unexpectedly. Use tonal experimentation to create a harsh sound.

And then that would be it “deviant” until you are comfortable being out of the circle, Liz reflected.

We paused, standing in silence for a few minutes, and then resumed our reflective dialogue: “there is an assumption that deviance isn’t beautiful. But if we think about some of the great artists who didn’t follow the norm, they created beautiful art, but it deviated from the norm of acceptability.”

This is interesting. There is an assumption that deviation is tough. But you can deviate from a musical scale, and it still has beauty.

Use Questions as a Guidepost for Improvisation and Exploration

The experiment in “deviance dance” showed several key elements that were important to both process and transformation of thought. The process was guided by curiosity and question. The curiosity was to explore how we might use our artistic forms of expression (dance and music) as a vehicle to interpret qualitative interview data that gave space for voice and multiple perspectives. The question behind this curiosity was derived from the research setting in which one of the researchers articulated a need to probe the multiple perspectives in the voices of the respondents in new ways. The curiosity and the need became the guideposts within which the architecture of our experiment was shaped.

Asking big questions, getting curious, and staying open to possibilities are significant to frame strategic thinking and innovation (Brown et al., 1999). It is through our questions and getting curious that we are stimulated into reflexive dialogue and reflection. As Bresler (2018) points out, and Markula (2015) illustrates, incorporating guiding questions and theoretical frameworks can assist in the interpretative process during a reflexive dialogue. When we “merely” improvised without direction, our efforts became exploratory at best. We would even say that we did not reach the level of performance to which Denzin (2003) refers. It was when we incorporated guiding questions that our act became a kind of performance that began to blend into the performative.

Test Improvisational Forms and Negotiate a Collaborative Space

Combining artistic forms (music and dance) in the research process was new to both of us and, as such, it required a phase of experimentation. The first two dances were performed as pure exploratory improvisations, during which we developed an understanding and praxis for how we would work together. Among the key insights were (a) The need to frame the dance with a particular research-based question. When the music and dance were combined without a probing question, it became just another dance. Connecting the arts and science needs a common denominator. (b) The need to understand the interplay between the different art forms and their role in the nonverbal dialogic process. In our experiment, the dancer had knowledge about the data and thereby was interacting with a third dimension. The musician was interacting with the dance. This raised questions about how the decisions we make (i.e., to take a breath, to stop a movement, or to change the rhythm) affect each other. This is a standard component of dialogue in which we interact with one another’s words (Isaacs, 1999), intonation, rhythm, and the like. When the words are missing from the dialogue, we need to develop new spaces in which to interpret and understand one another. (c) Understanding space, what it is, and what role it has in dialogue and reflection is important. Space can be conceptualized and communicated differently in the arts. For example, in painting and sculpture, black and white create a spatial balance. In dance, movement and stillness are used to create space, and, in music, sound and silence create space. The inquiry into the movement in space and time can open to reflections about how we as researchers cause others to move in our rhythm, and our perceptions.

Build Reflective Dialogue Into the Improvisational Space

The dialogue was an integral part of each dance. For example, in the first two dances, the dialogue reflected the experience of partnering to create a common language for communication. In the latter two dances, the reflective dialogues focused on digging deeper into our interpretations around a research theme and drawing on theoretical knowledge as well as embodied knowledge. This experience illustrates how the arts in research can invoke space to disrupt assumptions (Eisner, 2008; Finley, 2008). It also reinforces the importance for reflexivity to take place through interaction: it is not a solo act (N. Brown, 2019).

Allow Time for Dialogical Reflection to Emerge and Crystallize

Building on a previous improvisation enabled both of us to deepen and enrich our exploration of the data, this time adding to the pot the new themes. It also made visible the layers of understanding that we go through to gain new insights into our own assumptions and position in relation to the data. This was made evident in particular when the dancer began to reflect upon her own ability to dance “deviance.” The conversation began to revolve around not only what performing deviance might entail, but also our own assumptions about what is deviance. Through the dialogue, we were able to open new spaces for deeper exploration of ourselves and the data during the second iteration of the dance.

This suggests the need to create time, space, and structure for dialogue and reflection to occur; one that allows for iterations of thought and experience to shape understanding. Coetzee (2009) talks about this in her work on exploring identity through performative inquiry. She argues that humans can become fixated on a thought or identity. As researchers, we need to experience ambiguity to open our minds to new perceptions that can occur through embodied experience. We suggest that embodied experiences need time for reflection to emerge.

Journal Continuously to Promote Dialogic Reflexivity and Deep Learning

Journaling about what was learned was an important part of the process, no matter the form. In our experiment, we both used different kinds of journals. Digital journaling was used to capture the dialogues and improvisational performances. Text-based journaling was used as well during the improvisational space as well as after. The continuity of journaling both during and after the event created a space for continued reflection, which when shared with others served to stimulate new insights and understanding of multiple perspectives. This reinforces processes of dialogic-reflexivity that occur in relation to something external to ourselves. The dance became the experience; our dialogues became a gateway into the reflective-reflexive process. The journal extended the dialogic-reflexive space, transferring the interaction to a new space.