Framing and locating the aims and scope of Choreographic Practices and ‘The Choreographic Lab’ this article provides readers with an overview of recent debates around dance practices as modes of research. The lineage and discourses of practice as research are briefly introduced, with a particular focus upon notions of embodied knowing and the processes of speaking ‘from’ rather than ‘about’ movement. Such issues are identified and developed through references to the articles that appear in this first issue of this journal