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Abstract
Psychology of dance is an extremely burgeoning area with a very limited empirical research and information available relating to motivational aspects of this intensive field especially in Indian context. In the earlier research on classical dance, there have been a very few empirical studies that have analysed the motivational basis of dancers more so hardly any study could be traced that explored the motivations of classical dance in relation to gender specifically. This study would assess meaning in life, passion and self actualisation of female professional dancers where passion scale (Ryan and Deci, 2000), meaning in life scale (Steger, 2006) and self actualisation scale (Jones and Crandall, 1986) were used. Passion scale consisted of 2 subscales, harmonious and obsessive passion whereas meaning in life consisted of search for meaning and presence of meaning subscales. Literature reveal ample research work on topics in dance psychology, such as dance moment therapy (Chace, 1940) injury psychology (Noh et al., 2007) and performance anxiety (Walker and bates,2010). Limited studies have revealed the psychological factors in career development in this area. Research is all the more scant in the area of motivational analysis of dance as a full fledged profession. An attempt is being made to study and understand the motivational factors (meaning in life, passion and self actualisation) underlying dancing as an independent full time professional choice amongst classical and contemporary dancers in Indian context.