Ensemble Thinking (ET) is a toolkit of movement scores developed by dance-maker Nina Martin in the 1980s in New York City. The scores of ET arose out of a confluence of Martin's choreographic and improvisational performance practices. The impetus for developing ET was to develop a technical language for creating and discussing improvised dance.…

Movement can be a powerful force for sensory connection and expression in young children who sometimes don't speak. Their kinaesthetic curiosity naturally experiments with--and forms spontaneous relationships through--touching, sensing, and moving-with the world around them. This article wonders what might happen if children's connective movements…

This paper describes the pedagogical roots of the work we do, both as teachers and as performers; and how our work reaches beyond the classroom and into community, eliciting narratives and weaving them through improvised dance and music collaborations, eventually onto the walls of an art museum. Our concept was to solicit stories that told of some…

This article addresses the notion of touch and its constitutive role in the participatory sense-making process (de Jaegher and Paolo 2007) of play and dance improvisation. It is argued that touch is always relational, as it continuously changes the contours of self, other(ness), and world(ing). It is therefore surprising that touch traditionally…

This practice-based article illustrates how dance education pedagogies can help refugee youth adjust to new settings. To support refugee youth in narrating aspects of belonging in their everyday lives, this article offers pedagogies for creative movement that unfold through multiple stages. As developed in the first author's dissertation study and…

Professor Wade Madsen has been teaching at Cornish College of the Arts since 1985. This article serves as a window into his educational approach to teaching advanced choreography.

In this essay, we center hip-hop culture and Black cultural legacies. We envision and offer a two-fold framework which illuminates the intersection between the two. We explore ways that the Black cultural experience (or better yet Black cultural praxis) has always brilliantly and organically demonstrated the shape and form of a scholarship of…

Instructors in higher education arts programs have a responsibility to promote active citizenship and to encourage their students to use the creative arts as a vehicle for positive social change. However, in dance curricula, incorporating these concepts can be challenging, given the long history of structured technique pedagogy and the specific…

Arguably the world's most popular partnered social dance form, salsa attracts devotees far beyond the Latino communities in which this pungent "sauce" was brewed. The cross-cultural appeal of salsa, which celebrates its mixed origins in the Caribbean and Spanish Harlem, makes it a prime candidate for inclusion in university dance…

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…

STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) lessons have leaned heavily on the visual arts in interdisciplinary preservice learning. For preservice teachers, the application of STEAM pedagogies encourages complexity of thought connecting with their past and new experiences as well as greater self-awareness and risk-taking.…

This article proposes a method for teaching jazz dance technique according to music concepts and prioritizing deep embodiment of music. This method addresses what can be seen as a disconnect between current practices and historical understanding in jazz dance today, a gap that can be bridged with education empowering students to make innovative…

This article describes Communication by Design, a year-long project developed to foster an important dialogue between emerging student costume designers and student choreographers. Two university professors, one teaching costume design and one teaching dance, collaborated to help their students gain an understanding of how these two disciplines…

The ability to creatively resolve conflict supports excellence in communication and fosters a positive classroom/studio climate. Despite the fact that school violence continues to be high, many schools fail to teach conflict management, social-emotional skills, or community building to all educators. This research-based article shares dance…

Contact improvisation can serve as a way to access new understandings of Bartenieff Fundamentals. Inherent elements of contact improvisation such as thinking and feeling bodily in the moment, sensitivity to activated weight along with weight sharing and bearing, flow, whole-body organization, and immediacy of embodied presence provide fertile…