CHAPTER

8
DANCE: ART EMBODIED
Jan Deans, Jeff Meiners, Sarah Young and Katrina Rank

Chapter overview
This chapter presents examples of dance practice that involve kinaesthetic knowing and the essential
practices of creating, performing and appreciating. In this chapter, the authors acknowledge that
dance education is dynamic and draws on a range of related theories and the fields of educational and
professional dance practices, some highlighted here. Dance is the most totally embodied of artforms,
and therefore also one of the most fully sensory and most natural forms of learning. The case study
in this chapter investigates the introduction of a dance program in a metropolitan primary school.
Dance educator Katrina Rank, as a reflective practitioner researcher, documented her experiences of
planning for, and implementing a ten-​week dance unit for each year level of a primary school in which
dance had not previously been taught. The case study is supported in the ‘Beyond the case study’
section with a deconstruction of the elements of dance, and some guidelines for structuring a dance
class for early years or primary school level students.

Introduction
Jan Deans, Jeff Meiners and Sarah Young
Dance is a kinaesthetic learning mode. It involves participants in open-​ended, playful and purposeful bodily
improvisation, which in turn leads to the development of dance skills and understandings. Dance makes meaning
using the body as the instrument of expression and movement as the medium. In an educational context,
dance offers children an opportunity to learn by involving the whole body in kinaesthetic exploration, cognitive
processing, aesthetic experimentation and social engagement. Participation in dance education involves exploring
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and learning dance skills, improvising and creating dance, performing and appreciating dance, responding to and
reflecting on the dance of others, and viewing, talking and recording the dance experience through drawing and
story creation. Dance differs from other forms of physical activity in that it does not focus on movement purely
to achieve a concrete end or result, but rather the attention is directed towards the use of movement for dance
as an expressive and creative artform.
In the lasting words of Judith Hanna (1979), ‘to dance is human’, and from the beginning of life the urge to
move and to explore the world through the body is a natural behaviour. The human movement vocabulary is
extensive and it is this repertoire that provides the starting point for dance education. Everyday movements are
connected to our feelings: we jump for joy, clench fists in anger, and greet with open arms. Young children run,
skip, jump, turn and fall, and these natural locomotor movements are practised and refined through their play.

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We not only hear, but we feel the music as we dance and sing. We see our own and others’ adorned
bodies. The music both absorbs and expresses the beat, the rhythms and the singing, connecting us to the
group and the earth and the space around. These experiences were played out long ago, but are still enacted
by thousands in dance clubs across nations, demonstrating that humans have not lost their motivation or
capacity to embody their communal experience. Every component of the picture above might equally
describe a traditional indigenous dance of welcome, a dance party and a gospel church service.
We can help our students to make the most of their bodies as a sensory site for learning, for
understanding, and for making meaning. Over the past twenty years, dance has located itself in numerous
primary and secondary school curriculum documents worldwide, usually within broader and generic ‘arts’
organising frameworks, as part of ‘a general movement of dance in academe from its earlier placement in
physical education to a more resonant association within the other arts disciplines’ (Green 2007, p. 1119).
Similarly, curricula for the preschool years now also proliferate as governments have become aware of the
importance of the early years as a foundation for healthy, educated, creative and productive citizens. Such
curriculum documents establish foundations for dance as a lifelong activity.

Shaping expression and representation

This chapter presents examples of dance practice that involve kinaesthetic knowing and the essential
practices of creating, performing and appreciating. We acknowledge that dance education is dynamic
and draws on a range of related theories and the fields of educational and professional dance practices,
some highlighted here.
Gardner (1983) proposed bodily-​kinaesthetic intelligence as one of the ‘multiple intelligences’. All
people have a kinaesthetic or muscle sense that can be described as nerve endings sending messages to
the brain telling individuals how to move. The sense of moving in space through the air and managing
equilibrium is also known as proprioception, a kind of ‘sixth sense’ (ABC 2005) and, with kinaesthesia,
includes the body’s sensing of the skin surface, veins, muscle, bone, tendon and joint motion, weight,
balance, resistance to gravity, and the use of acceleration and deceleration. Awareness of the responses
of organs such as lungs and heart with changing rates of breath, heartbeat, body temperature and
perspiration are familiar to dancing bodies. Such inner and outer sensory experiences are intrinsic to the
notion of Fraleigh’s ‘lived’ dancing body (1987), which thinks and feels, and 21st-​century dance pedagogy
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also draws upon the field of ‘somatics’, with a range of related mind/​body-​related movement practices
(Buck 2006). Somatic practices, as in the work of the Alexander Technique, yoga, Body-Mind Centering
and the Feldenkrais Method, focus on the personal experience of the body from the inside out, aware of
sensation, feelings and perception, rather than viewing the body as an objectified, technical machine.
These influences on dance education are supported by research into neural science, which now
affirms much of what dancers have known in their bodies for a long time: that dance movement embodies
multimodal feeling, thinking and aesthetic understanding. Participants therefore come to the dance class
with their bodies, their minds and their movement, and this is where the dance class begins, with non-​verbal
body movement that is purposeful, intentional and rhythmic, and beyond everyday functional motor activity.

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According to the Australian Curriculum, ‘When people dance, the interplay of visual, auditory, spatial,
temporal and kinaesthetic perception evokes emotional and cognitive meanings’ (ACARA 2010).
In this artform teachers must become familiar with the elements of dance, developed from the early
work of dance education mind/​body pioneer Rudolf Laban (1971): namely, the body (body awareness
and body activities), the use of personal and shared space, and explorations in time, force, energy and
relationships between the body, floor and air, with others and with objects. Dancers think with the body;
embodying simple and complex knowledge in a unique way, they demonstrate understanding of these
elements of dance. Creating, performing and appreciating are central and related practices in dance,
enabling participants to use the elements to express ideas physically, communicate artistic intentions and
reflect critically on their dance experiences. Using safe dance principles and the practising of technical
skills are essential considerations for teachers working with all age groups. Dancing bodies may transform
both the dancer and the viewer, offering new ways of perceiving movement and the person performing.
Young people’s engagement in dance provides opportunities to develop embodied visual, kinaesthetic and
musical cultural languages, vital for early self-​expression, cultural understanding and harmony in 21st-​
century learning contexts at a time of shifting populations and rapid change.

Approaches to dance teaching

Through dance, children become acquainted with their bodies as ‘instruments’ for expression, and over time
through the practice of body part and whole-​body articulation, they develop their unique style. Children
need to achieve familiarity with a wide movement vocabulary that will allow them to be creative, so the
teacher should structure the dance class to include individual, partner and group movement explorations
that may lead to informal and more formal performance. There should always be a time for children to
explore personal dance interests without being directed by the teacher, and it is during this time that
children have the freedom and the time to undertake what Hanna (1982) calls ‘danceplay’. Teachers need
to nurture and support a playful attitude to exploring the body and movement for dance in early childhood
and school settings because danceplay has much in common with dance artists’ improvisational practices,
vital for creatively generating movement material for dance.
Along with play, intentional teaching is a key pedagogical practice in dance education. This purposeful
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approach requires teachers to know the content, concepts, vocabulary, skills and processes that children
will experience in dance, and to identify anticipated learning for young people. Intentional teaching
in dance requires planning for specific learning goals in creating, performing and appreciating using the
elements of dance, with a range of teaching strategies that can engage all learners. Planning should offer
young people realistic and appropriate challenges, with opportunities for personal, social and creative
success in body control, discipline and imaginative responses. A teacher-​generated dance framework
gives opportunities for children to create dance within a structure that encourages imaginative responses
to open-​ended tasks, as may be seen in the case study later in this chapter. In addition, questioning and
times for verbal reflection and recording through visual representation provide important opportunities for
children to gain deeper understanding of dance in relation to themselves and their world.

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Most aspects of a child’s experience can be expressed in body movement, with the world around
and the world within providing a rich resource for teaching content. Teachers can also gain inspiration
from children’s interests, ideas and feelings, and through the use of guided discovery they can develop
understandings from the simple to the more complex. It is important that consideration be given to the
movement possibilities of the selected theme, as some themes have more movement potential than others;
for example, the elements of nature, earth, air, fire and water lend themselves to extensive interpretation
of movement.
Inherent in the dance experience is rhythm, and rhythm is the platform from which all dance is created.
It is often considered as the creative principle of movement, as it shapes the dance by providing substance
to all exploration of movement. Rhythm is felt internally and expressed outwardly through patterns that
can range from a simple clapping beat to a more complex combination of patterns and sequences. Rhythm
is an impulse, a beat or a swing, and it can create flow and provide order for the movement patterning.
Any rhythmic pattern implies repetition, but repetition does not necessarily make the movement rhythmic.
Teachers need to become sensitive to the central role that rhythm plays in dance, and be aware that out
of rhythm flows music.
Music for dance can be either recorded or performed live, and it is helpful if teachers can develop skills
in using both. All teachers can become familiar with a hand-​held instrument that will be used spontaneously
throughout each dance class: for beginners a tambour or a drum is quite adequate, and for accomplished
musicians their own instruments. An instrument in the class is used not only for establishing energy, but
for accompanying improvisational dance and providing an immediate sound to concentrate the energy
of the group. It can also provide a useful way of signalling for the teacher and students to support the
safe management of learning tasks in a busy, movement-​oriented dance space. When using recorded
music, teachers can begin their collection with music that they enjoy and can analyse themselves for its
movement potential. They also need to consider children’s musical interests and moving beyond their
own musical preferences to introduce children to a wide range of music that reflects diverse tastes and
cultures. The teacher’s role is to help ‘children focus on the music to become sensitive to the expressive
potential for dance’ (Wright 2003, p. 250) by drawing their attention to the differing qualities within the
music and by asking open-​ended questions about how it makes them feel and respond.
Dance curriculum involves setting objectives, planning the lesson content, evaluating the outcomes
of the dance class and paying attention to the assessment of both individual and group achievements.
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The overall aim of assessment in dance is to create a comprehensive picture of the children’s learning; to
identify what the children know, what has been learnt, and what can be learnt. Assessment can take many
forms and is most authentic and effective when it is embedded in the learning process itself. Examples
are the use of close observation of individual children’s physical responses and how they interact with
others; constructive individual feedback to support the refinement and development of movements; group
discussions stimulated by the teacher’s reflective questioning; peer observations that encourage critique
and analysis of the dances; teacher program plans; and reflective journal notes.
A further important principle in dance education is that dancing bodies are diverse, and that
opportunities should include all body types and abilities found in educational settings. Across the world

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 Chapter 8: Dance: Art Embodied 99

dancers with and without disabilities work with many professional dance companies that have emerged
over recent decades. Inclusive approaches are vital for a more socially just dance education that challenges
body stereotypes and contributes to the positive construction and representation of young people, their
bodies and their identities as empowered, empathic and confident citizens.

Bring dance to the classroom CASE

STUDY
Katrina Rank

This case study describes the establishment of a dance program in a small coeducational
primary school situated in metropolitan Melbourne. As a teacher acting as researcher and
reflective practitioner, I maintained a reflective journal, took video footage of my teaching
practice and collected samples of student work in order to scrutinise and understand my delivery
of two dance programs. From the perspective of a reflective practitioner it describes the attitudes,
processes and discoveries I made as I presented the program to two cohorts of students with strikingly
different results. Before the introduction of dance in the curriculum, the students engaged in weekly visual
art classes and took part in the occasional music program. Dance was not considered as an option until
I began to lobby for its inclusion.
As a dance educator, I presented dance as an artform that would meet important gaps: inexperience
in performance and presentation skills demonstrated by most students; more opportunities for
­kinaesthetic learners; the need for active engagement in the context of increasingly dangerous sedentary
behaviour and for students to discover their own physical and expressive power and potential.
I expected that convincing a principal to include dance within the curriculum would be like moving
Everest. I was aware of the potential financial, spatial and timetable considerations, but thought that the
biggest challenge would be in conveying the importance of dance as a subject. Happily, I was wrong.
The principal was well aware of the benefits of dance and was more concerned about practicalities.
When will swimming and physical education take place if dance is introduced? What happens if it rains
and the PE students need shelter? Should dance be offered all in one day? Will all students have access
to it and for how long? Will there be an end product and what will this look like?
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We agreed to introduce ten weeks of dance in the last term of the school year, culminating in a
low-​budget, semi-​informal performance for parents in the school hall. All classes, with approximately
28 ­students in each, were scheduled to receive one 45-​minute class per week, with an additional two
sessions in the last week to accommodate rehearsal and performance. In spite of the performance
ultimatum, this agreement had some attractive features: the parents would have an opportunity to see
improvement in their child, dance as a subject would be highlighted, and the presentation provided
­students with a clear goal for their ten weeks of dance.
As a teacher, I drew upon my deep learning through movement. My dance career had been an
exploration of new territories –​of my body and how it responds to music ideas, and of adventures

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taken in space, time and energy. Through dance I have been whole. For young people starting off on
a journey of dance in education, I wondered where I should start. What did I want the students to
­experience? The answers resulted in a short manifesto, which began: It’s important to me that each
­student has the opportunity to:
• experience themselves as budding artists with great potential
• experience and celebrate their own unique movement
• celebrate other people’s dance
• play with ideas through movement, imagination and manipulation
• be stimulated and enjoy something in each class
• collaborate on creative problems and proposing solutions
• learn techniques involved in dancing safely and responding to music
• celebrate what their bodies are good at
• discuss their dance experiences using a growing vocabulary and developing aesthetic.
But it’s not all about me. The dance education environment is one of fluid roles and leadership,
where learning is dynamic and understanding is co-​created. I felt that it was important to turn my
­objectives into statements that I hoped my students would agree with: Through dance I will:
• have serious fun
• learn about the world
• learn about my body and what it can do
• listen to and share ideas
• watch others and be inspired by them
• invent new ways of moving
• find interesting solutions to strange problems
• have fun and be an artist.

Laying the foundations

The first five weeks of classes were designed to lay the foundations. We explored the body, what it could
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do, in how many ways it could do it, and what we thought of our efforts. We played with the elements of
dance and revelled in the imagination. We explored our movement potential and basic dance techniques
through warm-​up, articulating body parts and introducing rhythmic skills, variations of speed, size and
energy. I introduced amusing or difficult challenges of coordination, balance, control, strength and
flexibility.
Warm-​up was always purposeful and teacher-​led. It built incrementally from small, slow and
­controlled movements to explosive but intermittent jumps. The interrupted flow drew the students into
action and into learning from experiencing. The students tested their aerobic capacity while having fun.
I watched them very carefully, assessing their body awareness, alignment and core strength and building

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 Chapter 8: Dance: Art Embodied 101

challenges according to my observations, experience and curriculum-​based expectations. To avoid

embarrassing students at this early stage, my feedback was very general, unless there was an immediate
safety or technical instruction to impart.
The high-​energy warm-​up led to a quiet phase in the class. I introduced focus games and
­imaginative tasks or play at this point, such as passing the precious, ever morphing gift, mirror a­ ctivities,
balancing challenges or simple actions in canon, where movements introduced by one dancer are
repeated exactly by the next dancer, then the next, like dominoes. I found it essential to bring the focus
back to a quiet or collected space to ensure the students were ready for intentional creative exploration.
If this didn’t occur, the excitement would escalate beyond control –​to the ‘red cordial zone’, a term one
student used to describe the point of (almost) no return.
The structure for warm-​up and focus was applied to each year level, with variations in content,
speed, repetition and selection of musical tracks. In an effort to establish a culture of positive critical
discussion, I praised individual accomplishments and explained why I thought they were accomplishments.
I saw the beginnings of aesthetic and critical development in the responses to an improvisation game
designed by the students called ‘15 seconds of fame’. In this activity, students improvised freely to music
in front of their peers, who acted as though panellists in a dance competition. The main rule for the
carefully moderated feedback that followed was that students had to begin their comment with:
‘I liked ...’. I was surprised by statements such as: I liked ‘the way you turned really fast and then froze’,
‘the way you made it look like the wind’, ‘your movements towards the back. It looked like you were
­disappearing’. I never had to deal with a disparaging remark, which is perhaps a good reflection on the
quality of comments often provided by panellists from popular television dance shows, as well as the
value of the feedback rule.
The students made short dances in each class. These may have been in the form of a ­structured
improvisation such as designing a landscape of booby traps which one has to traverse, or the
­choreographic task of linking three still shapes at three different levels with a series of turning, b­ ouncing
or darting movements. The skills students developed through these activities would be crucial for
­developing the movement material for later performance work.
Our classes ended with a discussion that focused on discovery. What had been learnt? What
­problems had students faced or found solutions to? Could they describe how a particular movement
looked or felt? Did a vocabulary exist to describe it, or would we need to create a word or phrase to
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capture it? From this I was able to discover the state of a student’s verbal or written reflective c­ apacity
and build upon it. At the same time, I was keenly aware that reflection also occurs in action and is a
very important component of being an embodied dancer. A reflective dancer uses past experiences to
inform ­current choices. As such I acknowledged that my assessment toolkit must include this
difficult-​to-​quantify aspect of embodied learning. Close observation revealed when a student m ­ odified
an action to improve upon a previous attempt, or when they adopted or adapted another person’s
movement for a desired outcome. It happened frequently. While these moments were not reported on
or discussed verbally, they informed my day-​to-​day assessment and appreciation of individual student
learning processes.

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 102 Part 2: Teaching the Artforms

Learning to fly
Throughout the early weeks, it was not uncommon to hear ‘when are we going to dance?’ For many,
dance involves learning steps and putting them together into a routine. My confidence was challenged at
such times. I tried not to sound defensive as I tried to explain the importance of laying the foundations.
By the looks on some faces, I was only partially convincing. Once we began to work on the piece for
performance, however, this question was no longer raised. I hoped it was due to a dawning understanding
of process, but suspect it was more likely that the students now felt as though they were dancing because
the material was repeatable and performable (and had a few steps strung together).
At the time of this case study, a bullying awareness program was in effect at the school. In week 4,
I proposed bullying as a theme for the Year 5/​6 performance and the students happily agreed. With
only a few weeks to produce a decent work, I expressed the importance of cooperation, sharing ideas
and taking responsibility for creating and remembering. What followed was an energised and focused
time. The students created characters and explored initial ideas through a range of creative tasks. In one
such task the students considered exclusion in the playground. In groups of four or five, they created
freeze frames depicting scenes before exclusion, as exclusion occurred, and after it. These three images
were then ‘brought alive’ through movement. The students improvised some scenarios and then worked
together to set them so they could be repeated and timed to music.
As the work began to take shape, so did a simple narrative plot and the inclusion of a critical event.
From this point the mood changed. Students performed simple actions that represented cooperation,
trust and hope: acrobalance moves, a human staircase and ‘flying’, lifted gently on the hands of their
classmates.
By week 10 the students had learnt basic dance and choreographic techniques, and co-​created a
­narrative work that had relevance to them and of which they were very proud. Parents were excited by
the students’ achievements and I hoped their positive attitude would continue to influence the children
if dance were to continue in the school in future years.
The near miss
All the best laid plans, good processes and hard work in the world do not guarantee success. In the same
year, in the same school, the Year 3 class tested every strategy I possessed. The students were not to blame.
They were enthusiastic and energetic. They looked forward to dance class and loved the early sessions but
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never seemed to progress past a certain point. They would happily respond to choreographic tasks and
discussed what they thought worked, didn’t work and why. They showed a grasp of basic dance elements
and how to apply them at an appropriate level. But they could not or would not remember movement
sequences from the previous week. The interest and excitement generated each week seemed to dissipate
by the time they returned to dance class. This wasn’t simply a matter of poor muscle memory, though
that could have been a mitigating factor. It seemed to be a lack of understanding that in order to create a
performance, you have to start somewhere and build upon this. Video and group picture processes did not
help. The magic was lost after each class and we found ourselves in a perpetual Groundhog Day of dance
starting over and over and over. This would have been tolerable if a performance deadline wasn’t looming

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and we could concentrate on gradually building this group’s understanding of creative development. As it
was, with two weeks until performance we had nothing to show.
In desperation, I bought and hemmed lengths of 1.5-​metre coloured satin, one for each student.
I purchased the track ‘Colours of the Wind’ from Disney’s Pocahontas and began the task of ‘­painting’
the colours of the wind with 27 Year 3 students. I choreographed the piece and chose to limit the
­students’ choreographic input, instead focusing on what they were really good at –​running, rolling,
turning, listening to music and filling their bodies with it, while using the fabric as an extension of their
expressive, emotive bodies. Something in this approach worked. The students were not forced to invent
new movement but to be the movement; they did not approximate the colours of the wind in an abstract
way, they were the colours of the wind. I felt them as they ran past me, trailing their satins behind them,
a huge whirlwind of colour and kinesis, taking my breath away and leaving me humbled. It was a great
lesson: each group is different and there is no one way to make a performance. Intuition, that little voice
in your head that often goes against the grain, should be listened to.
Returning to my student-​focused goals, I saw that the students had behaved as artists having serious
fun. They learnt about the world and the world of dance through the subject matter and their embodied
response to it; they observed each other in stillness and movement and were inspired. They discovered
how powerful a single body in space can be and how many bodies, bent to the same purpose, can
­create a storm. Did they articulate this in words? No, and they didn’t need to. It was evident through the
medium of dance and was indisputable.

Beyond the case study

The elements of dance
Whatever the stimulus for dance may be, whether the teachers or the children initiate it, the chosen content
must have the potential for interpretation through movement. A dance class can be simply planned by
becoming familiar with the elements of dance, namely:
• the body—​locomotor (running, walking, skipping, sliding, creeping, rolling and so on); non-​locomotor
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(twisting, wriggling, stretching, shaking and so on); shapes—​still or moving (pointy, curved, twisted)
• space—​levels (high, medium, low); directions (forward, backward, sideways, up, down, diagonal);
pathways (zigzag, straight, curved, circular); size (big, small, medium)
• dynamic variations
• time—​fast, sudden, slow, gradual, accelerated … and not forgetting stillness
• force—​powerful, strong, light, gentle, soft
• flow—​unrestrained, ongoing, free, bound, tight, controlled
• relationships—​between body parts, the body and the floor, the body and objects, the body and space,
the body and others.

Jan Deans, Jeff Meiners, Sarah Young and Katrina Rank

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 104 Part 2: Teaching the Artforms

Structuring a dance class

While there are many ways in which the elements of dance can be utilised in the construction of a dance
class or a sequence of lessons, the following structure offers one such approach. In this holistic, child-​centred
approach, the dance class can be divided into four clearly defined sections, which are described below.
Warm-​up –​preparing the body
At the start of the class the warm-​up is designed to prepare the body for the activity to follow. Children
enjoy vigorous movement to up-​tempo music and the teacher can guide the articulation of body parts by
using basic body movements. Teachers must observe the children’s contributions closely and try to pick
up on new movement material to include in the warm-​up. Children are always very keen to offer material
for dance, and with the teacher’s guidance the content can move from individual exploration to moving
two body parts at the same time and then involvement of the whole body.
Generating a dance
After the warm-​up the main content is introduced, and this can either emerge naturally or be offered
by the teacher. The teacher needs to be thoughtful of what the dancers will be doing, how they will be
moving, where in the space they will be moving, and who they will move with. The idea is to provide
improvisational opportunities for individual, partner, small-​group and whole-​group dance experience with
the emphasis placed on refining and practising skills. Movement explorations need to occur on the spot,
from place to place, and a balance between high and low energy needs to be included. Stillness is an
important part of every class. It can be used by the teacher as a control strategy and can provide the space
for thinking about where to move next.
Free dance –​improvising by exploring and responding
During ‘free dance’ the teacher provides musical accompaniment with percussion instruments or carefully
selected music scores. Small groups of dancers are given the opportunity to dance freely in the space (‘Dance
any way you like!’), and the other children in the group become the audience, with roles changing so that
all the children have a chance to enjoy performing for their peers and to observe the dance of others. Both
roles are interdependent and are seen as active and creative; for the dancers, individual improvisation calls
on the creative process to be ignited, and for the audience the task is to observe closely and to learn from
the dance of others.
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Dance drawings –​reflecting and recording

At the end of the class the children are immediately involved in a reflective activity that is designed to
encourage individual thoughts and feelings about the content of the class. The combination of children’s
discussions, drawings, mind maps, storyboards, video recordings and the verbatim recording of the children’s
stories can provide a rich description of the dance experience. These mediums can be used for portfolio
assessment purposes or to give feedback to parents as well as to inform the teacher’s future planning.

Some ground rules for starting dance

• Respect each other’s space.
• Respect your own and each other’s body.

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 Chapter 8: Dance: Art Embodied 105

• Dance using movement safely.

• Listen to the teacher’s instructions.
• Stop, look and listen when a signal is given.

In conclusion …
Dance is a formed and performed art which stimulates bodily-​kinaesthetic awareness and embodiment by
focusing on inner intention, movement, the body, sensation, and the emotional landscape of the individual.
What is achieved is a connection between the body, the emotions and the mind where the participants
learn about themselves, others and their worlds through the creative expression of their ideas, feelings
and thoughts. This chapter shows how creative expressive body activity provides teachers and students
with a form that lends itself readily to exploration, appreciation, representation and reflection. Individual
teachers can act as agents of change, drawing on themselves and colleagues as a resource and garnering
support from professional networks and education departments to advocate for young people’s dance
learning within educational settings.
The positioning of dance within recent school curriculum developments mirrors the growing evidence
of the popularity of dance with young people, with statistics revealing increasing levels of participation in
dance as an organised cultural activity for young people, both females and males (ABS 2009). Advocates
know that dance is both a powerful educative tool and a necessary part of a balanced curriculum that
supports social cohesion in rapidly changing 21st-​century learning environments. The many meaningful
educational outcomes for early years and primary school curricula include the development of creative
thinking and problem-​solving skills, with students being given the opportunity to take risks and to take
responsibility for shaping their learning through dance-​making.
In dance, teachers, students and sometimes families join together as partners in learning to create
knowledge together. The teacher is the leader but also a participant and sharer in the learning process,
establishing reciprocal and positive learning relationships. This leads to quality learning dialogues where
generalist teachers share their knowledge, and model their passion and enthusiasm for learning in and
through dance and its associated arts in early childhood and school settings.
Copyright © 2017. Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.

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ABS (Australian Bureau of Statistics) (2009). Children’s Participation in Cultural and Leisure Activities. www.abs.
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ACARA (2010). Draft Shape of the Australian Curriculum: The Arts. Australian Curriculum, Assessment and
Reporting Authority, Sydney. www.acara.edu.au/​curriculum/​arts.html

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Sinclair, C., Jeanneret, N., & O'Toole, J. (2017). Education in the arts 3e. Oxford University Press.
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 106 Part 2: Teaching the Artforms

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Copyright © 2017. Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.

Sinclair, C., Jeanneret, N., & O'Toole, J. (2017). Education in the arts 3e. Oxford University Press.
Created from unimelb on 2024-04-21 07:38:38.