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…

As digital literacy increases in the world and as educational institutions respond, changes are occurring across disciplines, including dance. This study examines the current status of "integrated dance technology curricula" at two universities and one community college in the United States, all of which have differing pedagogical and…

In this article, the author describes an innovative collaboration with an elementary school math teacher that leads to original student choreography and engaging mathematical thinking. Using a tool the author created called Jump Patterns, students at Fox Hill Elementary School in Indianapolis, Indiana, engage in a robust, creative, choreographic…

This article focuses on the need for a differentiated curriculum for classical dance courses and a curriculum for undergraduate students in the liberal education framework. It begins with a retrospective analysis of dance pedagogy with a specific focus on its evolution in ancient India and reiterates the need for modifying dance discourses in a…

Dance has been a discipline in higher education in the UK for nearly 35 years; the first programme was introduced at the Laban Centre in 1975. The breadth of features that have come to characterise dance in the academy during this time have arguably been enriched by a permeability between the varied ideas that have come to be part of its maturing…

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 "tribes and territories" metaphor for the cultures of academic disciplines and their roots in different knowledge characteristics has been used by those interested in university life and work since the early 1990s. This book draws together research, data and theory to show how higher education has gone through major change since then…

The author is naturally a kinesthetic learner. As a child she was steeped in the wilds of seashore, fields, and woods in which she was free to roam, explore, and imagine in a deeply sensual, movement-oriented world. Because of these first experiences of freedom of movement and spontaneity in the highly intense natural world, she found the…

As artists seek new ways to reflect an increasingly digital and global culture, theatrical dance in the UK and Europe has seen a growing collaboration and cross-fertilisation between forms of dance, theatre, visual art, film and technology. As the boundaries between artistic disciplines continue to blur, it seems clear that dance audiences need to…

This 21st Century Skills Map is the result of hundreds of hours of research, development and feedback from educators and business leaders across the nation. The Partnership for 21st Century Skills has issued this map for the core subject of the Arts.

This article describes the Dancing across Disciplines (DAD) project (1998-2002), which the author conceived in the idealism of the potential of dance and music as the great levelers, in the promise of the celebration of difference through rhythm and song, funded by a $225,000, three-year grant from the US Department of Education's Fund for the…

This book is developed to help teach curriculum through the use of movement and dance, while giving students a chance to use their creative problem-solving skills. The text describes a step-by-step process through which instructor and students can learn to transform academic concepts into actions and dances. Theoretical information is also…

Dance educators, the authors argue, should assume some responsibility for providing alternative dance-related career opportunities to dance students. With proper career guidance and an interdisciplinary approach, many students could become researchers, writers, critics, physiologists, arts managers, dance production designers, technicians, or…

The tradition of using giant puppets in dance rituals is widespread throughout Africa. Huge puppets can communicate spiritual and moral authority, which is all the more easily accepted because it is delivered with a sense of playfulness. Giant puppets also create unique movement possibilities. This potent combination of symbolic meaning and…

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.