Abstract
It may be because of the influence of the mentor-apprentice system that information has never been widely disclosed nor any actual survey has been conducted on modern and contemporary dance studios. This study aims to collect such information using an Internet search site, which is a highly disclosed tool accessible to learners, to show the fact of modern and contemporary dance studios, the characteristics of their dance instructors and recognition of qualifications. A total of 403 people were surveyed using mail and Internet surveys, yielding data from 87 respondents (21.6% response rate). As a result, Dance studios established in the 1980s and 1990s accounted for 22–25% of the total number of studios, with an average of 59.63 students per class, ranging from 2-86 years old. The age of the instructors was 52.45 ± 15.88 years old. That were diverse in the names of the classes they taught, the dance genres in which they had experience, and the qualifications they held, which were not limited to modern dance. As for their careers, 65.33% of instructors had experience of being affiliated with a dance company and 51.81% had experience of being affiliated with a dance school. However, the instructors themselves were not certain whether they could evaluate their teaching skills based on these statistics. Still, currently, Students in a dance studio may be evaluating instructors based on information like company affiliation experience, so, the need to clarify the relationship between which careers are associated with which dance teaching skills was confirmed. It was found that they skeptical about the requirement to hold qualifications.
