Teachers, coaches, choreographers, and others in movement performance-related fields continually work to assist performers in becoming skillful. Skillfulness, or talent, in such fields has been conceptualized theoretically in a number of different ways, for example, the milestone viewpoint, an aesthetics perspective, and the presence-of-characteristics approach. The purpose of this inquiry was to (a) describe the conceptualization and (b) illuminate the process that experts from different movement-related disciplines brought to bear in creating meaning for skillfulness in children's educational dance performances. The participants were 10 fifth-grade students and a panel of 5 experts in the movement-related fields of pedagogy, physics, aesthetics, professional dance performance, and music. The fifth-graders choreographed partner dance sequences that were videotaped as the creative culminating activity of a 5-lesson dance unit in their physical education class. The sequences were designed in relation to open instructional tasks centered on the movement content of meeting and parting, counterbalance and countertension, and shape making, and were performed with recorded music as accompaniment. The experts viewed the videotape individually, commenting verbally on their perspectives of skillfulness demonstrated in the children's performances. Subsequently, the panel came together, viewed the videotape again, and discussed and ranked the sequences based on their criteria for meaning of skillfulness in children's dance. All individual and panel comments were audiotaped and transcribed verbatim. The transcriptions were coded and analyzed inductively using a comparative analytic process. The following themes are found in the data: (a) Movement dynamics (e.g., flow, timing) was the most significant feature influencing panel members' perceptions of skillfulness; (b) the physical structure of the sequences (i.e., the choreography) contributed to the concept of skillfulness; (c) the magnitude of the occurrence of identified critical features (e.g., skilled performers remembered their sequences better) shaped the concept of skillfulness; (d) partners did not have to perform skillfully throughout the sequence as moments of performance framed the panel members' perspectives on skillfulness; and (e) the context of the individual panel members and the performers affected the way skill was discussed and analyzed. The insights gained through this study contribute to a beginning dialog as to what is skillfulness/talent in children's educational dance. Almost as importantly, this study contributes to the dialog of how skillfulness is observed, analyzed, and assessed in professional educational practice.Keyword(s): dance education, elementary education, performance