High school dance students are at an age where they can process challenging technical concepts with an anatomical lens. One of these concepts is turnout, an essential joint action used in a variety of dance contexts and disciplines. As this joint action is not always well explained or well understood, many students try it without adequate guidance…

This article serves as an in-practice guide to help teachers facilitate the creation of a dance piece using the five-paragraph essay format to explore themes through motif and manipulation. It is an outline of the process that begins with the selection of a theme and the development of a motif to represent that theme. It compares the development…

Returning to studios after COVID-19, student-teacher tensions seem to be higher than ever. Teenagers who spent the beginnings of their young adulthood in isolation clash with instructors who might mistake their stress and insecurity for apathy and laziness. In this article, I examine my personal experience with teaching teenagers and offer…

The dance team season, unlike any other high school or collegiate sport, runs year-round. Typically, tryouts are held in the late spring, teams attend camp in early to mid-summer, and the first performance takes place at the first home football game at the end of the summer. This schedule means dance team coaches are eager to schedule efficient…

Many dancers enter college with plans to join a professional company after graduation. However, if for dancers that have already sketched out their post-college professional career on paper and it looks pretty similar to their high school or studio dance experience, then college is going to be a long four years. Choreographers today are searching…

This study explored the motivational experiences of nine successful elite performers in ballet, music, and swimming at Norwegian talent development (TD) schools. Semistructured interviews were conducted. Thematic analysis revealed that the performers navigated within and between several contextual layers, characterized by egalitarian values,…

Dance education in the P-12 setting serves many purposes, including creating technicians, producing creative thinkers, and increasing students' understanding of emotional and physical health. However, in settings where there is often only one teacher running an underfunded program, how is it possible to attain all these goals? The instructor must…

The purpose of this study is to examine specific features of the traditional Kazakh dances as the methodological foundation of training specialists in the culture and art universities. The article describes the main typologies of Kazakh dances, such as ritual and ceremonial, combative-hunting, work dances, household-imitative dances, festive and…

This study was carried out within the context of a requirement for every Australian Capital Territory Education and Training Directorate (ACT ETD) high school to include Indigenous perspectives across all areas of the curriculum. For the first time ever in the case study school reported in this article, two Torres Strait Island dances were taught…

Technique classes are often viewed as a purely physical part of dance training, one in which the student voice is silenced. This article demonstrates the principles, teaching strategies, and assessment tools that endeavor to change the power dynamic and allow students to own their learning in technique class and rehearsal. Assessment in this dance…

The idea of "best practices" in the performing arts is introduced as a set of progressive educational values and pedagogical strategies that attempt to not only train youth in the performing arts, but also to be transformative. This article builds on the work of educational reformer John Dewey to describe progressive performing arts…

In this article, the author shares how she was able to help young choreographers in East Oakland, California, to find their own creative voices, choose new movement styles and discover dance as a way to express something important and meaningful about their lives through their two-year dance history project. East Oakland School of the Arts (EOSA)…

The post-apartheid Dance Studies curriculum in South Africa is attempting to offer school learners both an education and training in dance as an art form. The outcomes-based syllabi are intended to ensure that learners come to respect the diversity of South African society, and therefore a range of dance styles and genres are offered in order to…

In this action research study, the author examines her teaching a unit of study focusing on the dance "Outside In," choreographed by Victoria Marks in 1994. Aided by an analysis of multiple forms of data collected from her high school dance students in response to the unit, the author identifies and then reflects upon two important themes, one…

Over a three-month period, Arcadia High School and Arizona State University formed a community partnership with the help of New York modern dance choreographer David Dorfman to create an original dance titled "Here." Dorfman's community-building approach is based on personal refection, collaboration, critical thinking, problem solving,…