Examining experiential qualities on the stage: A study on leisure experience of Salsa dancing

Abstract

With the increased popularity of social dances as a leisure activity in Turkey, there is a need to explore different aspects of experience associated with the participation in social dance events. In this sense, the purpose of this study was to examine leisure experiences of the "dancers" on the stage and to discuss the most important experiential qualities of salsa events from participants' perspectives. Focus groups were chosen as the most appropriate data collection method in this study. Purposive sampling procedure was adopted in this research to select potential respondents. Participants who attended Sunday Dance Nights (n=6), 1 st Eskisehir Dance Festival (n=10), and Salsa workshops before the dance parties (n=8) in the city of Eskisehir were chosen as a sample. For labeling the emerged themes, existing leisure experience literature was frequently consulted. A total of five preliminary themes based on Schmitt's experiential modules -sense experience, emotional experience, think experience, act experience and relational experience-were examined in the context of experiential qualities of Salsa dancing. According to results, it was found that the sense experience is the most important dimension among the other experiences because engaging all five senses on the stage is very important for active involvement to the dance events.