Abstract

This study examines creative dance as a communicative space for contemporary public issues in Thailand, focusing on narrative structure, stage symbolism, and meaning-making mechanisms. Using a qualitative design, it integrates performance analysis, narrative analysis, semiotic analysis, and document analysis to interpret ten creative dance works produced within a foundational choreography course in higher education. The works were examined as performance texts and accompanying documents, and were additionally assessed through a reception evaluation by five independent Thai-dance experts who were not involved in creating them. The findings show that the works address diverse public issues, including environmental crisis, identity and social oppression, political memory, conflict, economic crisis, and the well-being of educational personnel. A three-part narrative structure emerged as the dominant pattern, moving audiences from recognition of an issue to crisis, emotional confrontation, and social awareness, while a two-part structure created emotional contrast and dramatic rupture. Concrete and abstract symbols—such as masks, clocks, red cloth, candles, news recordings, and silence—transformed abstract issues into embodied, visual, sonic, and affective experiences. The study proposes a synthesized model in which public issues form the conceptual core, narrative structure serves as the pathway of communication, and symbols together with the performing body materialize social messages as shared audience experience. The findings affirm the potential of creative dance as an embodied, aesthetic public communicative space, with claims limited to a contemporary learning and creative context rather than professional Thai dance or nationwide generalization.

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