Dance and Protest Special Issue Editorial

We discuss the ways popular music studies, and then dance studies, has engaged with the theme of protest. We hope that this discussion not only provides a starting point for scholars from both disciplines to begin to engage with key texts in the other field, but also that it facilitates conversations and dialogue across these two domains. In many ways, both dance studies and popular music studies have been marginalised in the academy, and yet both fields offer vital tools to understanding how we engage with and make sense of popular culture. How does the music we listen to, the movements we gather through, and the combined expressions we manifest help us create a sense of identity, a mode of distinction from others, a community? Both dance studies and popular music studies can help us answer these important questions.