This article serves as an in-practice guide to help teachers facilitate the creation of a dance piece using the five-paragraph essay format to explore themes through motif and manipulation. It is an outline of the process that begins with the selection of a theme and the development of a motif to represent that theme. It compares the development…

A multidisciplinary dance and theatre arts program geared for high school-aged youth can result in both short-term and the long-term outcomes for its students if it seeks to offer a life-changing peak experience as part of the arts training and performance process. By integrating a combination of dance, movement, theater, music, creative and…

This study was carried out within the context of a requirement for every Australian Capital Territory Education and Training Directorate (ACT ETD) high school to include Indigenous perspectives across all areas of the curriculum. For the first time ever in the case study school reported in this article, two Torres Strait Island dances were taught…

The idea of "best practices" in the performing arts is introduced as a set of progressive educational values and pedagogical strategies that attempt to not only train youth in the performing arts, but also to be transformative. This article builds on the work of educational reformer John Dewey to describe progressive performing arts…

This study was presented at the American Educational Research Association 2012 conference in Vancouver, Canada. The study explored how action research of arts-based teaching (ABT) impacted at-risk students in three urban public schools in southern California, USA. ABT was defined as using arts, music, drama, and dance in teaching other subjects. A…

The interdisciplinary collaboration is a type of subversive activity that helps the students and teachers to see beyond the traditional subject boundaries. A high school teacher's collaboration with the dance instructor helped students to understand and see Barbara Kingsolver's "Animal Dreams" in a new way.

While teaching science in an alternative arts high school, the author continuously addresses the challenge of welcoming creative, right-brained students into the world of systematic inquiry. Busily mixing paint colors, choreographing futuristic dances, performing comedic theater, and practicing the banjo, the students rarely initiate authentic…