Young people today need to be flexible, imaginative and resilient and to use their creativity holistically and appropriately. "Close Encounters" shows how creativity and the special relationships that facilitate it can be nurtured within education through dance. Dance Partners for Creativity, an intensive two-year qualitative research project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, underpins this book. It shows that dance-based partnerships have a place in the kinds of education futures that will have to be made in the 21st century. The enquiry and research-based ideas about dance-based partnership’s role in current and future education presented will greatly enrich the thinking of practitioners, researchers and policy makers interested in arts practices and educational futures.