We demonstrate the ways an improvisational dance workshop provided the opportunity for university students to be autonomous actors and engage in embodied sense-making through dance--two key parts of the conceptualization of enactive cognition. As part of a Design-Based Research project, we use Interaction Analysis to present examples of using…

From its inception in 1998, the National Dance Education Organization (NDEO) Board used ever-evolving versions of an Applied Strategic Plan (ASP). Each ASP consisted of goals and related objectives to develop and grow the organization. While the wording and order changed as NDEO grew, the essential nature of the goals remained the same. From 2011…

Rhythmic virtuosity or moving with "percussive attack" is an ultimate performance quality for Black/African dance. The practice of musicality is a window into a dynamic system of intersubjective communal creativity. Drumming, for example, provides percussive sensorial information that directs a dancer's somatic and choreographic…

This article presents a critical consideration of the ways in which specialist dance teachers in New Zealand state secondary schools respond to curriculum expectations to incorporate Maori arts content into their lessons. Disparity between Maori and non-Maori achievement is evident in the state schooling system. More than 20% of students in New…

In 2016, professors representing Biology, Dance, Music, and Theatre and dance program students created "Dunes," a performance piece that depicts the ecological succession of Michigan's sand dunes. The process used to make this work is a direct representation of the steps that Team Hyena Puppet, a collective of teaching artists and…

This article reflects on the ways in which socially engaged arts practices can contribute to reconceptualizing the contemporary modern dance technique class as a powerful site of social change. Specifically, the author considers how incorporating socially engaged practices into pedagogical models has the potential to foster responsible citizenship…

Higher education students and employers in the creative industries dismiss the prevailing skills-focused concept of "employability" as inadequate. Entry into the creative world and subsequent survival require access to contact networks, confidence and the adaptability to cope with uncertainty and with changing contexts for business,…

This article examines how dance knowledge is seen through syllabuses in Swedish upper secondary schools. A starting point is life-world phenomenology. A phenomenological way of thinking allows that human beings are intersubjective, linked with and within the world, which influences the view of dance knowledge and how research is elaborated. A…

The act of teaching is constituted by tensions between contradictory influences of national educational systems, teachers' professional/personal identity, cultural and social values. Qualitative research methods can explore this complex situation. Indeed, narrative methods have explored teachers' "life histories". This article provides a…

This article examines assessment of "intangible" concepts in dance education such as creativity, risk, originality, or artistic thinking. Through the development of assessment workshops for arts educators, conducted from 2009 through 2011 across the state of Illinois and supported by the Illinois Arts Council, the authors developed a…

In her lecture the 2012 NDA Scholar/Artist, Josie Metal-Corbin, chronicles four decades of working with artists, educators, librarians, and scientists. The kinetic language of dance and the visual impact of specific environments provide provocative opportunities for collaboration, wherein the site becomes the framework or map for the dance design.…

This paper examines two improvisational processes, Authentic Movement (AM) and automatic drawing (AD), the possibility of their presentation to the viewer and the meanings such presentation may bring to the work presented. Improvisation has traditionally been used in the process of creating a finished work of art rather than in the finished art…

Photography should be regarded as an art rather than as passive documentation. Those interested in photographing dance can best think of it as an opportunity not just to record what the dancer is doing, but also to explore the dancer's personality and to stimulate the invention of movement. This exploratory approach will not only benefit the…

Rhode Island has recently mandated a new kind of arts requirement for high school graduation that involves proving proficiency in one of four art forms: music, visual art, theater, or dance. How the state came to mandate this law, how proficiency is currently defined and assessed in dance, and what effects the cuts in arts education funding will…

This article explores the contrasting arguments for the place of the arts in education made by the two distinguished arts educators--the American Elliot Eisner and British dance and physical education theorist Graham McFee. Both scholars begin with the premise that the arts should be central to a liberal education and then diverge. McFee argues,…