From Body to Digital Space: A Bibliometric and Thematic Mapping of Embodied Pedagogy and Technology in Dance Education

Abstract

Digital technologies are increasingly reshaping dance education, yet the relationship between technological mediation
and embodied pedagogy remains conceptually fragmented across educational, cognitive, and computational research.
This study maps the intellectual, geographical, and thematic development of research at the intersection of embodied
pedagogy, digital technology, and dance education. A bibliometric analysis was conducted on 188 Scopus-indexed
publications using Biblioshiny, combining performance analysis with science mapping to examine publication growth,
influential sources and authors, geographical and citation patterns, keyword co-occurrence, thematic structures, and
research trends. The findings reveal a rapidly expanding and increasingly interdisciplinary research domain connecting
dance education with embodied cognition, virtual reality, human–computer interaction, learning systems, motion
capture, and related digital technologies. Embodied cognition remains an important conceptual foundation, while
technological themes have become increasingly prominent, indicating not a displacement of bodily learning but a
reconfiguration of embodiment within digitally mediated environments. Based on this convergence, the study proposes
digitally mediated embodiment as a bibliometrically informed conceptual lens for understanding how digital
technologies participate in the experience, representation, interpretation, and reflection of bodily movement in dance
education. The study contributes an integrated perspective that moves beyond the conventional body–technology
divide and provides a foundation for future empirical research on how emerging technologies can support
technologically enhanced dance education while preserving its kinesthetic, affective, aesthetic, relational, and cultural
dimensions.