Although contemporary dance improvisation techniques and comedy improvisation are seldom linked, the two forms evolved around the same time and have many similarities. Both forms exist in the moment, share a highly ephemeral nature, and make use of physical games and structures. Both forms teach students the skill of being present, so essential to…

Despite tertiary institutions acknowledging that reflective practice is an essential component of undergraduate dance teacher training, there is often a disparity between the tertiary students' reflective skills and the more sophisticated reflective ability needed to navigate the twenty-first-century workforce. This paper charts the evolution of a…

This research investigates experiences of an international education in dance. Through the narratives of seven female dance practitioners from the southern Mediterranean region, who have trained in contemporary dance in Western cultural contexts, a multiplicity of encounters are illustrated. Two key findings emerged from the dancers' experiences.…

My dissertation, a self-reflective autoethnography, examines, analyzes, and interprets children's dances created by seventeen nine-11 year olds attending a Midwestern, urban elementary school. The significance of this longitudinal study is in the offering of a fresh perspective on children's dance-making as a mode of embodied understanding and as…

Integrated dance has featured in several publications from the mid-1990's onwards, particularly from the standpoints of equity of access, and contesting perceptions of dominant conventional notions of what dance is and who can dance including issues of embodiment and representation. Other publications and manuals focus primarily on how to teach…

This paper explores how young ballet dancers' bodies are constructed and narrated through their desire to become performing ballet dancers. The schooling of the balletic body engages the young dancer in embodying the discipline of ballet and in developing a particular belief in a performing body. The embodied set of acquired dispositions that are…

This case study focuses on a group of teachers' and students' opinions regarding the recent reforms in the dance department of Tainan University of Technology (TUT) in Taiwan. The author uses Pierre Bourdieu's theory of forms of capital and symbolic violence to probe for the motivation, process and consequences of the changes brought about by…

In August 2010, dance artist Jess Allen undertook an eight-day journey on foot and public transport between the 10 wind farms of mid-Wales, talking to the people encountered about changing landscapes and changing values in a changing climate. The sound recordings of interviews and encounters conducted in this process were edited into a score that…

This qualitative instrumental case study explores Finnish student music teachers' experiences of teaching and learning as participants in an intercultural project in Cambodia. The Multicultural Music University project aimed at increasing master's level music education students' intercultural competencies by providing experiences of teaching and…

The battement tendu is introduced early in dance training, remaining integral to a dancer's vocabulary. Although appearing relatively simple to execute, the tendu aesthetic takes years to master. One reason might be that efficient performance requires complex coordination of postural balance. Known as postural control, this coordination appears in…

In this first article as the new editor of this column, the author discusses issues in the private sector for students with goals of pursuing degrees in higher education and aspirations for performance careers. She is well aware that several areas comprise teaching in the private sector, many of which focus on far different goals than these. She…

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…

In July 2010, on the crest of "The Arab Spring," 28 independent dance teachers from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Malta, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon, gathered in Bodrum, Turkey, for the Symposium on Dance Education in Arabic Speaking Countries. This article reflects on the symposium experience, examining the sociopolitical…

This study investigated children's perceptions of dance ability and disability and changes to perceptions following participation in an integrated dance program. Focus group interviews, field notes and observations were used with children with physical disabilities (n = 5) and without disabilities (n = 9) between the ages six and nine before and…

A large number of sociologists have adopted the notion of the embodied subject to escape the trappings of the rational choice theory in sociological analysis. From a phenomenological perspective, the notion of an embodied subject refers to a subject who is in unity with the world. In this paper, I will present my ethnographic study of a group of…