Exploration of the Dance Partner Relationship in Dance Sport

[[abstract]]Abstract This research primarily discusses the partner relationship in dance sport. By means of interviewing 26 males and females involving with dance sport, we tried to perceive the subjects’ viewpoint towards the dance partner relationship in dance sport. The content includes four elements; namely, the interviewee’s understanding of the sport dancer’s personality traits, generation of sport motivation, the sport involvement degree, and the influence of involvement degree on benefits of sport. In this research, we have applied focus group method and depth interview approach to probe into the impact of “gender”, “characteristics of dance”, “personality traits”, “motivation for sport”, and “sport involvement” on “types of dance partner relationship. Additionally, we have also explored the “benefits of leisure” generated from “types of dance partner relationship”. Comparison and analysis has been proceeded continuously throughout the study to extract the research results as follows: 1.The dance relationship in dance sport can be categorized into three major types—(1) Involvement degree type and involvement stage type; (2) Goal oriented type and free will type; (3) Friends-making type and independent working type. 2. Dance partner relationship involves not only the two dancers but also the instructor so that the perfect golden triangle and balance of the dance partner relationship can be achieved. 3. Personality traits, sport motivation, and sport involvement degree have influence on dance partner relationship on different aspects. In other words, personality traits affect the cooperative consensus between the dance partners, sport motivation leads to different cooperative partner relationships, and sport involvement degree has impact on the mutual agreement of the dance partners. 4. The above-mentioned dance partner relationship types have divergent influence on the six benefits of leisure. In the end of this thesis, we discussed the research results and proposed several suggestions as reference for the subsequent studies in the future