| Chapter 2: | Legacy for Dance as a Discipline: 1917–1967 |
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In theory, a shared interest in the benefits of study and practice in human movement was the convergence point for physical education’s invitation to dance to join its curriculum. In practice, however, sports and recreation dominated the attentions, facilities, and financial resources of most women’s physical education programs. The subjective, aesthetic nature of dance found itself at uncomfortable odds with the utilitarian, objective desires of physical education. As the American university became more professionally and vocationally oriented (with the pace of these changes picking up speed after World War II), each discipline turned away, one from the other, toward allied areas of study. Questions regarding the appropriate identification of physical education or dance as worthy of the moniker discipline, by colleagues in the established subject areas of the humanities and sciences, exacerbated tensions between the two fields. Doubt and skepticism expressed by the professorate pushed physical educators toward sports, measurement, and the physiology of exercise (and associated quantitative research designs) while dance turned toward a professionally oriented arts-identity; aligning itself with performing arts programs in music and theatre to substantiate its profile in the eyes of the academy.