In recent years there has been a remarkable proliferation of ballet competitions. This prompts a number of questions, in particular how much are they affecting current training and performance practice and, more fundamentally, whether the notion of competition may be antithetical to dance as art. Underlying these questions is the issue of…

This article presents a historical, ethnographic and practice-based study of dance education in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The concepts of dance learning, hegemony and counter-hegemony are analysed in the context of cross-cultural interventions in politically marginalized communities, and the theoretical concept of anti-hegemony is…

Regardless of geographical limitations, community partnerships can flourish through videoconference technology. This article presents iDance Arizona (iDA) research as a tool for supporting the teaching and learning of dance in rural settings. This research focuses on university/K-12 collaborations and examines the pedagogy of videoconferencing in…

Although the technological methods in which dance artists create, develop, document and present their work have grown significantly over the past two decades, technology education in undergraduate dance curricula in the US often remains peripheral. Some dance programs in higher education, especially those with graduate programs, now include a…

Beginning with the theory of cultural embodiment, this paper suggests that the work of some contemporary choreographers, because of the use they make of their cultural backgrounds, inhabits "in-between" spaces. Cultural embodiment, it is suggested, leads to the choreographer's absorption of movement as a source of historical information and an…

This paper examines two improvisational processes, Authentic Movement (AM) and automatic drawing (AD), the possibility of their presentation to the viewer and the meanings such presentation may bring to the work presented. Improvisation has traditionally been used in the process of creating a finished work of art rather than in the finished art…

This essay narrates the biography and dance aesthetics of Myra Beltran, a pioneering, independent and contemporary woman dance artist in the Philippines. Featured here are the history, alternative aesthetics, philosophy, and influences of Myra Beltran's works. It comes from the point of view of an author who is also a woman, dancer, and writer…

The aim of this study is to present Rallou Manou's work, as well as to demonstrate her contribution to the development and emergence of modern dance in Greece. The data used were mostly collected from Rallou Manou's personal "Archive," but also from published reviews, interviews from her students and the personal experience of the writer. The…

The aim of the study was to find out how dance students experienced learning in an international distance education program delivered in an e-learning format using a virtual learning environment platform. In order to organize the students' experiences with the various learning assignments, we focused on three broad categories of learning tasks:…

A team of researchers at De Montfort University's Centre for Excellence in Performance Arts has explored uses of technology in dance education. The wider context of dance and technology pedagogy includes research into dance, technologies, learning and teaching and the relationships between teaching and research. The paper addresses all of these…

With few exceptions, dance, and traditional dance in particular, has received little attention regarding the development of technological tools that can support teaching. The WebDANCE project was a pilot study with a European scope that aimed to experiment with the development of a web-based learning environment for traditional dances. The final…

This paper represents the final layer of analysis carried out in a study investigating the conceptions of and approaches to creativity of three expert specialist dance teachers within late primary age dance education in the UK. This research journeyed through a number of phases culminating in an analysis of the pedagogical dilemmas encountered by…

This paper aims to address two related themes. The first theme is the current provision for practical skill development for disabled dance students within Higher Education in the UK, and the extent to which inclusive pedagogical approaches challenge conceptions of the disabled body, both within and beyond dance. The second theme draws on the first…

This study explores the potential contribution of the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) to our understanding of student teachers' strength of intention to teach dance prior to and following an intensive eight-hour module before beginning their school-based practice. Students attending a primary Postgraduate Certificate in Education Course (PGCE)…

This paper examines the relationship between narrative and spectacle in the Hollywood musical, with reference to the work of Busby Berkeley and Gene Kelly. It discusses Busby Berkeley's "backstage" musicals in terms of his "aggregate" approach to dealing with the narrative/spectacle relationship, and considers the effect of the backstage musical's…