This paper details aspects of a research project that explored nineteen Australian primary (elementary) schoolteachers' perspectives of Creative Arts education. The study investigated the participants' personal Arts experiences and training, as well as their views of Arts pedagogy. In depth interviews with the participants highlighted the…

Why would boys want to dance? Why would anyone want to dance? The argument prosecuted in this paper is that dance educators have tended to see dance as a self-evidently good thing with self-evident benefits for children who learn to dance. In other words, dance educators tend to concern themselves with why students should dance rather than why…

Performance-making and peace-building are processes predicated on the production of safe space. But what is "safe space"? In performance-making, what is it that makes space safe without losing the creative potential of tension? What role is there for risk? And, once achieved, how does safe space become meaningful beyond its immediate…

This paper examines the meaning of ability in the context of dance education, in part, via the lens of aesthetic education, a reasonably well-developed body of ideas, and asks what it means to be "aesthetically able". While aesthetic education tends to focus on aesthetic appreciation, it does also deal with a person's capacity to respond…

This paper represents an attempt to document some of the methods and processes involved in creating a new dance work. I observed, over a 5-week period, the making of a contemporary dance piece with a group of 19 3rd-year BA dance students at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts. The choreographer was Melbourne-based Dianne Reid, who…

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine characteristics of resilience among Australian adolescents, the extent to which resilience might be strengthened through participation in a dance/drama competition, the Rock Eisteddfod Challenge (REC), and the impact participation may have on health related behaviour. Design/methodology/approach: …

In this paper I explore the special type of thinking, moving and dancing place which is opened up for decolonisaton when students engage in an embodied pedagogical practice in Indigenous education. I examine what decolonisation means in this context by describing the ways in which the curriculum, the students and me, and more generally the…

A college course in Queensland (Australia) brings Indigenous women into the class to teach their music and dance. Performative pedagogy involves students as audience and participants, providing opportunities to critically engage with the social, political, and ethical dimensions of power and knowledge in the university setting. Student comments…

A White Australian professor of a class on Indigenous women's dance has her Aboriginal sister-in-law conduct workshops on Indigenous dance. The classroom dynamics resulting from the complex power relationships (teacher as White woman, Aboriginal family member, and students) disturbs Western paradigms. The responsibility of "safely…

Seven articles present gender issues from a variety of perspectives, discussing a gender fair dance education program in Australia, gender issues in dance history pedagogy, women and dance performance, encouraging male participation in dance, using West African dance to combat gender issues, and gender issues across the curriculum. (SM)