In her experience teaching modern dance at a range of institutions, the author has noticed that even as many students exhibit superior physical skill in technique class, most are lacking when it comes to expression. From large university BFA to smaller liberal arts programs, she finds that her students often fall into a land of physical imitation,…

As a dance teacher in public elementary schools for the last 25 years, Janet Adams has always recognized the creative link between dance and writing, and offered her students structured opportunities to combine the two. She has also honed her management skills and kept a pretty tight ship. Creative expression, though, be it through dancing or…

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,…

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…

In this article the author, Rachel Rimmer, explores how improvisation can facilitate skills that are transferable to other areas of dance practice, enabling different areas of study to complement each other. The experimental forum of improvisation as an alternative method of learning technique is considered, contemplating the value of this…

Since 1999, when the author first started teaching creative process-based dance programs in public schools, she has struggled to find the time to teach children the basic concepts and tools of dance while teaching them to be deliberate with their choreographic choices. In this article, the author describes a process that helps students and…

Arts activities have been included in the educational curriculum of public schools for a number of years. Most often, course offerings in the arts consist of visual art, vocal music, and instrumental music classes. Although not as common, dance has also been included in the educational curriculum. Research and anecdotal evidence suggest that…

For intermediate and advanced university students, technique class has traditionally been the place to study a particular teacher's style and to hone technical skills. This article suggests a pedagogy that broadens standard practice by focusing additionally on both performance principles and spontaneous problem solving in the technique classroom.…

The aim of this study was to learn about the effectiveness of two dance teaching techniques, the creative examination technique and the direct instruction technique, on the satisfaction of basic psychological needs, the level of self-determination, the perception of usefulness, enjoyment and effort of physical education students. Likewise, it…

National research shows that students attending arts-rich schools have higher levels of motivation and better academic and social success. This report, the first in a series of three on the Creative Learning Initiative, is used to track the progress of our district's investment in the whole child through the arts and creative teaching at each…

This article reflects upon the process of creating dance in an intermedial telematic dance setting with university students. Some contextualisation is made of five telematic dance projects (the "Phillypool Projects 2007-2012") that have taken place between two universities, one in the UK and one in the US. It will explore some of the…

Science and the arts might seem very different, but the processes that both fields use are very similar. The scientific method is a way to explore a problem, form and test a hypothesis, and answer questions. The creative process creates, interprets, and expresses art. Inquiry is at the heart of both of these methods. The purpose of this article is…

The integration of science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM) serves to develop creative thinking and twenty-first-century skills in the classroom (Maeda 2012). Learning through STEAM promotes novelty, innovation, ingenuity, and task-specific purposefulness to solve real-world problems--all aspects that define creativity. Lisa…

Collaboration is inherently part of many dance pedagogies, dance practices, and dance careers, which is why dance students are frequently required to work and learn together in the dance studio and classroom. Outside of dance, in a variety of disciplines, the ability to collaborate is prized as a highly valuable competency, and the facility to…