Learning to (be a) dance(r). On “becoming the phenomenon” and writing/reporting ethnography

The paper methodologically discusses the self-/ethnographic research I have beencarrying out for 28 months on the world of dance. Apart from structural andquantitative data that I employed for mapping the field and its boundaries,organisation, internal segmentation, etc., data include in-depth interviews andfieldwork material (field notes, video-recordings, etc.) regarding two Italiancompanies and the related schools. Moreover, in order to better understand howdance training affects the (sense of one's own) body, I enrolled in dance courses,explicitly putting at the centre of the research my bodily, practical, theoretical,moral and aesthetic learning, and consciously, knowingly and reflexivelyexploiting my lived experience as an heuristic tool.I address the epistemological problem of the invisibility of common senseknowledge, claiming for the acknowledgement of the embodied nature ofsensemaking, identity-making and understanding, and for a research method –namely, “becoming the phenomenon” – aimed to socialise the ethnographer notonly to new beliefs and narratives, nor only practical skills, but also new ways ofbeing-in-the-world and inhabiting it. I discuss the process of acquiring – as an adultethnographer – embodied competence(s), an habitus, and pay attention to theanalytical opportunities offered by teaching/learning contexts. Finally, sinceethnographers' work also consists of making explicit – through the practicaleveryday work of writing/reporting – the details of their own lived experience, Ifocus on techniques and strategies for writing (self-)ethnography and accountingfor the corporeal and tacit dimension of everyday social life.