The National Honor Society for Dance Arts (NHSDA) has existed since 2005, and more than 35,000 students have been inducted to celebrate their artistic merit, leadership, and academic achievement in dance. A recent addition to NHSDA programming, specifically geared toward highlighting the contributions of our collegiate chapter members, is a new…

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…

Many job postings in postsecondary and PK--12 dance education will ask applicants for a statement of teaching philosophy. This is most commonly a one- to two-page written statement that summarizes your beliefs about teaching and learning that underpin the way you go about structuring learning activities, curriculum, student engagement, and…

This article examines teaching strategies to empower metacognition through dance writing and collaborative dance making based on a project for middle school dance students at a Title I middle school during the Fall of 2020. This project draws on theoretical frameworks of critical pedagogy, intersectionality, and educational constructivism. Based…

Climate change is a contemporary global crisis that necessitates pedagogical innovation for the middle school dance classroom. This article describes an integrated design for a dance and science unit. Building on students' kinesthetic abilities, teachers are able to create a unit comprising a series of lessons on bird migrations effected by…

This qualitative study investigates how two dance teachers (one in Toronto and the other in Hong Kong) shifted issues of pedagogy and autonomy in virtual dance classes during the COVID-19 pandemic. It reveals that participants quickly adapt to new environments and utilize available technologies in both teaching and learning. The study shares…