Dance Improvisation is an essential skill and tool for dancers. It is grounded in the kinesthetic experience and its constantly changing dynamic qualities through self-movement. It requires a spontaneous kinesthetic response in a spatiotemporal vigorous qualitative dynamic happening of affect and movement; a momentum that allows dancers to perform…

"Professional performance experience versus pedagogical knowledge in teaching technique class as a creative process" is a qualitative examination of the practices of six contemporary technique teachers that identifies the ways in which their educational and professional performance experiences have affected their teaching practices.…

Ballet training is designed to develop creative, expressive artists. However, an explicit approach to technical instruction may not assist in the development of individual creativity and may encourage counterproductive perfectionistic goals. This paper describes a five-day intervention designed to enhance creativity in thirteen adolescent…

Background: Physical activity (PA) is associated with positive health outcomes. However, children's access to physical activities they enjoy may be limited. Purpose: To evaluate second-grader's PA against the U.S. DHHS goals to see if a before-school, play-based dance program contributed to these goals. Operational feasibility was evaluated using…

By critically reviewing and discussing existing scholarship, this article considers how individuals construct their embodied performances of gender while navigating the diverse teaching--learning paradigms experienced within dance discourses. The inherent relationships that exist between dance education and gender have been substantially…

Teaching the creative process through analysis and understanding of one's choreographic research inspires and motivates students to create their own meaningful movement.

This article explores the dynamics of Gaga, a contemporary movement practice developed by Israeli choreographer Ohad Naharin, as an emergent methodology for embodied research. Deploying Gaga as a case study, this article argues for the relevance of knowledge generated through lived, felt experience as well as ways of knowing grounded on bodily…

Diplomacy is the art of relationships: the ability to work with individual to international-level concerns in a sensitive way. Like the diplomat, dance artists and educators know that success requires sensitivity to rapidly changing situational demands. A growing body of research suggests that the nonverbal art form of dance can be an effective…

Racism is a social construct that is inscribed on the body. In this study, two dance educators working in the U.S. engage the body in the dismantling of racism. This case study is presented on teaching anti-racism in dance education, through embodied dance making processes. For this study, over sixty undergraduate students participated in…

Dance provides both psychological and physical benefits, and yet many boys miss out due to societal perceptions surrounding the feminization of dance. These perceptions can lead to the bullying of boys who dance. Because dance teachers are in a unique position to engage boys in dance, it is important to investigate their perceptions. This article…

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…

This study aimed to empirically investigate preservice teachers' learning experiences during a series of geometry-themed choreography and dance activities. These pedagogical tasks were designed to examine the challenges and solutions that participants experienced when exercising their spatial reasoning abilities, particularly during the transition…

The purpose of this study was to investigate Japanese secondary physical educators' professional development experiences teaching Japanese traditional dance education at a private secondary school. This study used a descriptive-qualitative research method, using in-depth interviewing within andragogy theory. Four physical education teachers (three…

Children's optimal learning is supported by strong family relationships and many innovative programs seek to strengthen those relationships. Tap To Togetherness is doing so through dance, and sharing this dynamic art form with families in the United States and now in Ghana and Kuwait. This is a follow-up to "Tap To Togetherness: An Innovative…

This article documents a reflexive personal teacher narrative (Brookfield 1995; Cochran-Smith and Lytle 2009; Humphreys 2005; Hamilton, Smith, and Worthington 2009; Larrivee 2010) about understanding the legacy of the Indian Residential School experience for indigenous people of British Columbia, Canada. In 2015, a new curriculum was introduced. I…