The author explores the relationship of play to choreography. He defines choreography as the rules that guide body movements from their minute physicality to their broad social and cultural contours. He conducts a review of the literature and accentuates five general topics--learning through creativity; choreography as writing and pedagogy;…

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.

Interest in nurturing individuals' creative potential is rising. Yet, the potential benefits of incorporating creative embodied activities have been neglected in both applied and research settings. To address this gap, this study examined the effects of a Creative Dance program on university students' creative self-efficacy, emotional creativity,…

This article presents explorations of co-choreographing the early years dance pedagogical settings through dialogical and intra-active approaches in the context of artistic research. It discusses how to choreograph the pedagogical settings in such a manner, that the distribution of the artistic agency would become more equal, and the complex…

In this article, we explore the transformational power of holistic studio culture in dance education, drawing from our personal experiences growing up in dance studios that engaged in community events and dance competitions. Unlike traditional studios bound by a single technique, our formative environments embraced a rich tapestry of dance…

This article presents a study on three somatic movement dance educators' perspectives on developing creativity in dance students. A post-positivist, inductive qualitative study was undertaken to gather practitioners Katye Coe's, Sara Reed's, and Rebecca Weber's phenomenological reflections on teaching somatically informed dance and how somatic…

The cultivation of innovative ability is an important part of China's current long-term education planning and innovative development-driven strategy, as well as an important issue of university teaching reform. The cultivation of innovative ability of dance professionals in colleges and universities is a problem of great concern for dance majors…

Dance students in university tend to have minimum understanding and skills in processing music to address the creativity needs in new dance works. Therefore, effective and critical learning strategies are needed so they are able to process music to create dance works. This research aims at enhancing dance students' understanding and skills to…

Classical ballet training has been criticized for prioritizing technical excellence over creativity, despite 21st century dancers needing to be strong in both aspects. The aim of this study was to investigate professional choreographers' views on (a) how ballet training inspired vs. inhibited their creativity and (b) potential gender differences…

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…

Background: There is a global consensus that stimulating and fostering children's creativity in education is crucial. Addressing creativity has become an imperative in educational policies and in school curricula internationally. School-based physical education (PE), and specifically the teaching area of dance, has been identified as an important…

For arts practitioners and the creative community, the response to COVID has meant cancellations or postponements and a rethinking of how to share stories. The same too can be said for how students experience the arts in school. For two years in a row the biennial and much anticipated school production was cancelled due to COVID disruptions, not…

Research on the role of the ballet pianist is limited. A gap in the literature concerns the ways in which dance instructors and accompanists 'make sense' of their collaboration. The working relationship between a dance teacher and a dance musician in a ballet class was investigated. The researcher, a ballet pianist, conducted a semi-structured,…

In this qualitative case study, the authors examine teacher students' experiences from teaching creative dance in their practicum in physical education (PE) in Norwegian schools. From a phenomenological perspective, and taking concepts such as "participatory sense-making," "embodied affectivity" and "embodied…

This research intended to identify effective teaching styles that nurture "creativity" in the teaching of dance choreography in Korea. This research is based on the first phase of research that identified choreographic knowledge as educational content aiming to cultivate creativity in the teaching and learning of dance choreography in…