This paper investigates teaching artists in the USA whose work is rooted in dance and dance-related disciplines. Teaching artists, although the descriptor itself remains both ambiguous and debated in the USA, provide a good deal of arts education delivery in K12 schools and afterschool programs. Based on survey data from a range of dance teaching…

Action research is a method of examining one's own practice through reflection and critical self-study. In this paper, the author considers her experience teaching a two-day lesson on connections and relationships in William Forsythe's dance "One Flat Thing, reproduced" (2000) and the accompanying website, Synchronous Objects. The author reviews…

This paper considers student perspectives on the learning of dance history in a British University. The investigation focuses on the student experience. Recent researches into student learning and the idea of history provide a context for the study. A pedagogic research project in a British University sought, captured and analysed the views of…

Our field research in five contemporary dance technique classes, observing and describing the complexity and diversity involved in the traditional "demonstration-reproduction" pedagogical relationship, has led us to reconsider the role of modeling behaviour in the dance teaching context. We have also outlined recent neuroscientific findings…

This paper applies contemporary principles in cognitive and social psychology to understand how Western ballet and modern dance is imbued with emotional and narrative meaning by an audience. These include nine Gestalt concepts of visual form perception as well as cognitive heuristics of representativeness and availability in concept formation and…

Dance has an important place in multicultural education and the development of culturally responsive pedagogy. Through dance, children can explore and express their own and others' cultures and share their stories in ways other than the spoken and written word. This paper presents a case study concerning a professional development programme in…

In this article, I argue for an acknowledgement of the significance of the dancer's role in the creation of independent contemporary dance. I propose the term "moving identity" to outline the independent contemporary dancer's "way of moving" which could be perceived as the accumulation of various factors including training approaches,…

This paper describes a teaching model, "The Teaching Artist", developed to address the pedagogical and cultural divide between the traditional dance teacher and the dance artist who teaches: traditionally, one teaching about dance and the other, teaching through dance. The "Teaching Artist" model was developed through the "Q150 Project." The "Q150…

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…

Dance, ballet and modern in particular, is culturally defined as a feminine activity in the United States. The purpose of the present study was to examine the experiences of professional male modern and ballet dancers in the United States. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 current professional ballet and modern dancers. We examined…

Dance, an activity endowed with intentional expressivity and intrinsic affectivity, has been the target of neuroscientific research since the last decade of the 20th century. We can make several inferences about the cognitive and motor aspects in dance based on this research. The main goal of the present study is to raise questions about how…

This article is a qualitative study, which adopts the approach of social construction in order to comprehend the role played by the body in the formation of social behaviour. Using the concept of embodiment, professional ballet dancers have been chosen in order to investigate the particular attitude they form towards their bodies. The use of their…

The aim of this study was to examine how dance teachers work with psychological skills with their students in class. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with six female professional teachers in jazz, ballet and contemporary dance. The interview transcripts were analyzed using interpretative phenomenological analysis (Smith 1996). Results…

Within the last decade, research has supported the use of dance for people with Parkinson disease to improve health and wellbeing. While the majority of study findings have been positive for a variety of psychophysical outcomes (gait, mobility, and balance confidence, for example,), little has been reported in regard to the process of selecting…

The comparative study examined dance students' views of their dance education and training in tertiary education (further and higher) and their perceptions about the opportunities offered in the their courses available in England (higher education) and in Greece (further education). The aim was to explore similarities and differences between…