The Dance Community in Sydney
Ray
This is all really preliminary cause I have no idea what you want to research. There doesn't seem to be much around on this, so one day if you're looking for an honours/masters/PhD thesis, you might want to follow up on threads from your PIP!
Ideas:
Making all the wrong moves [https://www.smh.com.au/national/making-all-the-wrong-moves-australias-dance-industry-under-scrutiny-20150708-gi7s1t.html] is a fabulous starting point as it identifies some critical issues in dance education: overtraining of talented students, popularity of dance, lack of regulations for teacher qualifications, sexualisation of young children, injuries, dance being increasing seen as a competitive sport rather than a team performance (influenced by the competitive US dance scene as viewed through TV shows such as "Dance Moms" and "So you think you can dance")
Ausdance has a large archive of articles (hover over TOPICS to see how they've been categorised) about different facets of the dance world. I found the widest variety of ideas under "dance research" but you might be interested in one of the other headings.
Stats
The Australian Bureau of Statistics has statistics about the Children's participation in dancing (2003-2009) This information is not available for later years (but an increase is noted under 'cultural activities' in 2013)
Dance in Australia gives a statistical snapshot of the Australian Dance industry in 2004
Participation in Sport and Physical Recreation, 2012 compares participation rates of dance with other recreational activities in Australia.
Top 20 sports played by Aussies, 2014 shows dance as the 6th most popular sport - ahead of cricket, netball and rugby!
Other
This is a list of dance theses that might trigger a question for your PIP: https://ausdance.org.au/articles/details/australian-university-theses-on-dance-19902005 . It might be hard to get hold of these if you wanted to read them, but some will be online through the university libraries.
The Arts and social wellbeing in rural communities has a comprehensive survey about success to the arts and individual wellbeing that may help if you are doing an IRP on how the arts affect an individual's wellbeing http://www.dca.wa.gov.au/Documents/New%20Research%20Hub/Research%20Documents/Creative%20communities/Regional_Well_Being_THESIS_web.pdf
Dance/dance movement and general wellbeing, depression, and anxiety : a meta-analysis is a psychology thesis that examines many different studies of the impact of dance on emotional wellbeing. It concludes that dance has a small but significant impact on inidividuals suffereing from anxiety and depression.
Dance with me is a movement that uses ballroom dance to fight social isolation (in schools and mental health insitutions) and bring together people in conflict situations (eg Israelis and Palestinians!). So far it diesn't exist in Australia but you might still want to watch one of the documentaries or see if any of the people involved would mind doing an online interview.
This is nothing to do with your topic( It looks at how things like NAPLAN have led to the devaluing of arts education in schools), really, but you might want ot look at how they strutured the surveys nad interviews, which are all included in the appendix. https://research-repository.griffith.edu.au/bitstream/handle/10072/367125/Riek_2014_02Thesis.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
Might be worth chasing up
Ian Maxwell 1997 PhD Phat Beats, Dope Rhymes: Hip Hop Down Under Comin' Upper Supervisor: Lowell Lewis Ian is now Associate Professor with the Department of Performance Studies at the University of Sydney
The Historical Dimension
Heather Clarke has just finished a PhD thesis on the history of dance in Australia with special emphasis on the colonial period. You can find out about her work at Australian Colonial Dance, which includes such gems as The Transit of Venus (a dance celebrating Captain Cook's voyage), a sextion on clog dancing (precourser to tap dancing), and references to dancing in early C19th police reports (having fun was sometimes a crime)! She is happy to be contacted for interviews and workshops (she lives in Brisbane, but sometimes teaches elsewhere in the country). If you're into ballet history, you definitely want to talk to her about the sorts of dances upper class young ladies learned at school dancing masters - you'll definitely see alot of links.
Looking out from Down Under gives an overview of where dance is at in the C21st (2006), pinpointing directions dance has taken since the 1960s, , including preoccuptation with bodily identity, technological change, and awareness of indigenous issues and our proximity to Asia, and practical issues such as funding and marketing.
Looking out from Down Under gives an overview of where dance is at in the C21st (2006), pinpointing directions dance has taken since the 1960s, , including preoccuptation with bodily identity, technological change, and awareness of indigenous issues and our proximity to Asia, and practical issues such as funding and marketing.
Dance styles
So you think you can dance - Australia: allegiance and provocation outlines key issues with the TV show, including the representation of the creative process (not) revealed in teh editing, the deification of ballet as the essence of all 'technique' and the subtle sexism and racism of the judges. IT's a great starting point if you want to look at how different dance forms are valued in our culture (including a historical overview of how dance education was class-based), or the influence of dance on popular culture.
The Acro invasion gives an account of the way leading dance teachers view the current craze for acrobatic "tricks" in auditions and dance competitions.
Dance and Gender Identity
Aesthetics, athletics and Art - A study of men who dance - looks at how male (ballet and contemporary, passing reference to tap) dancers construct their identity by negotiating traditional notions of masculinity. It would be interesting to contrast these findings with men who choose other forms of dance to express themselves (eg hip hop or traditional dance forms).
This analysis of kids' choreography in the Children's Dance Festival in Melbourne highlights the roles that gender conditioning plays even within an assumption of equality.
Critics lash the 'overtly sexual' world of children's dance schools is a newspaper article from the Age which presents an unusually balanced view of the issues around the sexualisation of young dancers.