Measuring and Improving Développé Height in University Dancers Using Single-Case Research Methods

Background: Développé is a leg gesturing skill commonly used in concert dance forms such as Ballet and Modern Dance. It requires mastery of subtle skills that make dance unique. Measuring unique dancer capacities such as développé can present special challenges for dance medicine and science researchers. Purpose and research design: One purpose of this study was to evaluate a field-deployable protocol for measuring the height of dancers' développé to the side. A second purpose was to use a concurrent multiple-baseline experimental design to determine whether each of six university dance majors nearing the end of their pre-professional training could improve their performance of développé through targeted training. Methods: During 4, weekly, 30-minute training sessions, dancers were taught an approach to performing développé advocated by an internationally recognized dance kinesiologist. The dancers also completed 3, self-guided training sessions per week in which they applied the approach while engaging in développé-related strengthening and stretching exercises. Each dancer's développé performance was measured twice weekly for 8-1/2 weeks (17 measurements). Results: All 6 dancers' développé height increased only when training was applied for each dancer suggesting that training, rather than other uncontrolled variables, was the likely cause of the improvements in performance. Conclusions: Two conclusions appear justified: (1) reliable and responsive measurements of développé height can be made efficiently in field settings, and (2) university dancers with considerable prior training can improve their performance of développé with targeted training.