7.1: Introduction- What Is Dance Pedagogy

Introduction

Figure 7.1. Seated warm up during dance class in the United States

(Florida Grand Opera. (2016, July 12). Opera in Motion dance class with guest teacher Rome Saladino. Photo by Lorne Grandison. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Opera_in_Motion_Dance_Class_with_Guest_Teacher_Rome_Saladino_(28106735574).jpg)

Traditionally, dance educators are trained in Physical Education. At times, the general populace confuses the role of a dance educator with that of a studio model of teaching (reactional dance, physical fitness, competition, technical skill building, creative expressivity, performance development, and locomotor ability). However, a true dance specialist must be able to transmit knowledge that conveys the robust and deep understanding about the complexity of this craft (McCutchen, 2006). A dance specialist can teach:

• Dance Technique
• Dance Performance
• Dance History
• Dance Criticism
• Dance Composition
• Dance Pedagogy
• Dance as a Tool for Expressivity
• Dance as an Art Form

To do all of this would be truly heroic. Being a dance teacher is an heroic enterprise. But before we dive deep into Dance Pedagogy, in terms of theory and practice, we need to address a larger question: Why is teaching dance important? This larger question will frame the entirety of this chapter from why dance is important, to dance as education, child development, and learning theories. This chapter will formulate numerous possible rubrics for how to design an effective dance class and follow it up with why and how it is effective. But to get started, let’s start with a broad picture of dance across human history to deeply contextualize what we will discuss in this chapter.

For humans to have a cultural mechanism to express their ideals in an understandable way, teaching helps us teach the populace about what we value as a community. Teaching teaches others about our ideals. Teaching helps teach the future populace about our ideals now… Teaching provides tools. Math and engineering are tools to achieve human ideals. And dance can express human ideals. Dance is a human activity that dates back to pre-history. Like other arts such as cave drawings, oral traditions, carving, music, toolmaking, dance has the potential to express -- and access-- human ideals through art (Peterson, 2018). Many cultures throughout world dance history have treated the role of dance instruction as a sacred role, such as the shaman, a title that came with rank related to a specialization within a community. In other instances, teaching dance can be a shared communal ritual where everyone participates in the education of the young through group participation in movement that is meaningful to the community. Ever since leading and following became a formulation for teaching and learning, dance as a cultural expressive form has required teachers to impart dances as they evolved over time.

Cultural movement forms are not set in stone, and the evolution of dance throughout all cultures, required purveyors of tradition or movement trainers for preservation and transmittal of culturally recognizable and meaningful forms. These teachers passed down strategies that could effectively convey the aesthetics, creativity, intellectual and cultural importance of dance which is to express human ideals. So, if dance expresses human ideals, perhaps we need to start with asking why are human ideals important?

The cave dwelling artwork at Lascaux, France was not just documenting a hunt. They were documenting a successful hunt, a vision for community’s success, a documentation of prosperity -- Expressing an ideal. Teaching the populace, and teaching future people about the past. In Marshall McLuhan’s (1964) impactful work Understanding Media, he stated that “the medium is the message” (McLuhan, 1964). When applied to Dance Studies, we might look at the dancing body as the medium, and the choreography as the message (Gray, 1989). If we were to extend this concept further into dance pedagogy, the process of teaching is the medium, and the successful student engaging meaningfully in the world is the message.

Definition: Pedagogy

Defined as the function or work of a teacher; or teaching, pedagogy is the art or science of using instructional methods for teaching and education.

This chapter is designed to stimulate speculation, investigation, and enhanced praxis. Learning the theory and practice of dance instruction will facilitate the development of a real-world toolkit so that dancers with differentiated end-point goals in their dance career will thrive. Whether you wish to become a dance teacher, professional stage performer, dance retail store owner, studio owner, choreographer, dance historian, or physical therapist… this chapter aims to cultivate an introductory means to conceptualize, develop, retain, refine, and transmit dance skills and knowledge which can help make the world a better place. Credit must be given to Brenda Pugh McCutchen who wrote Teaching Dance as Arts Education (2006) and Dance Curriculum Designs https://dancecurriculumdesigns.com/brenda-pugh-mccutchen/. Her work advances dance education as seriously as art and music education which encourages and challenges us to innovate creative studio-classroom pedagogical practices where the teaching integrates conceptual understanding with dance skill development (DCD, n.d.).

Key Terms

• Aesthetic
• Analogy
• Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning
• Context
• Four Cornerstones of Dance Education
• Kinesthetic
• Kinetic
• Learning Styles for Dance
• Pedagogy
• Teleology
• Universal Design for Learning