Picture book stories are an important tool for teaching creative dance to children. This article presents a dance activity using a picture book story that educators can use to promote movement exploration and creativity.

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.…

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…

Physical education (PE), and specifically the teaching area of dance, has been identified as an important pedagogical setting within which young people develop creativity. Creativity is thus an important aspect of schooling. Several studies have suggested however, that dance is seldom taught in PE in ways that acknowledge creative aspects of…

This article critically reflects on the pedagogical practices I explored, reimagined, and employed while shifting dance improvisation education from face-to-face lessons in a dance studio setting to existing online platforms during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021. Through self-study research as a method of inquiry I analyse my experiences…

This article presents a phenomenological study on lived and living conscious experiences of improvisational dance. Six experienced improvisational dancers and one dance piano accompanist were interviewed individually, and shared the past-lived experience of improvisational dance. After the interviews, the six dancers agreed to perform solo…

The present study uses a qualitative approach to focus on dance improvisation and flow. Dance instructors with wide experience in performing and teaching dance improvisation took part in semi-structured interviews that featured questions about dance improvisation and flow, including issues of flow in dance education with children. The data were…

Practitioner Exchanges (PXs) at Luna Dance Institute are casual community conversations co-facilitated by dance educators around a topic of dance teaching inquiry. With the physical disconnection of the COVID era, these in-person roundtables shifted to Zoom, and became even more essential in bringing teaching artists together. Educators from all…

Contemporary dance and meditative practices are increasingly intertwining in both academic and professional settings as the wide range of current mind/body modalities infiltrate the already vast landscape of modern dance. While the value of emphasizing mindful movement in dance cannot be understated, focusing solely on the slower, sensorial…

Dancers embody movement with an individualized approach, informed by their own unique physicality, creativity, and lived experience. In this paper, the author describes an integrative dance course in higher education that invites adult community members with developmental and intellectual disabilities to dance alongside college students twice per…

This study examines the pedagogical strategies of a dance instructor working with older adults in a virtual asynchronous community dance class, and the ways in which dance instruction influences older adults' physical literacy. Physical literacy is a multidimensional framework which helps us understand meaningful and motivating physical activity…

Introduction: The actualization of crossover point design activities in modern artistic practice is due to the growing mass demand for entertainment. The musical and theater project involves the introduction of new technologies. Creation of synthesized art "crossover-projects" requires the efforts of a group of managers and performers,…

In the past a typical performance situation consisted of a proscenium stage, performers on the stage and audience seated somewhere in the front. In today's technological age, audiences are prone to watching performance on their smart devices. This live-disconnect between the audience and performer/performance has affected the industry on multiple…

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 study explored the pedagogical implications of integrating creative dance into fifth-grade students' poetry reading and writing within the context of an educational design research project. Two teaching designs were developed and implemented by a researcher, a dance teaching artist, and two primary school teachers during two research cycles…