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2022 daCi Conference
bios and abstracts
Natasha Alhadeff-Jones
Global Water Dances, International
Think Globally, Dance Locally: How Global Water Dances Brings Intergenerational Communities of Water Activists Together
In this lecture-demonstration, participants of all ages will learn about and experience aspects of Global Water Dances, a biennial performance event that uses the international languages of dance and film to promote awareness and a behavioural shift toward solutions for water preservation and conservation through community engagement. Through the viewing of photos and video excerpts of Global Water Dances events from around the world that feature children, we will be inspired to continue the tradition of performing the “Global Dance” with each other. Doing so, we will start our community of Global Water Dances among the larger daCi community, which could continue through to the next Global Water Dances event in 2023! Emphasis will be placed on how Global Water Dances supports choreographers, dancers and filmmakers by promoting the use of technology, through ongoing webinars and an online video.
Natasha Alhadeff-Jones holds a Master's Degree in Dance Education from Teachers College, Columbia University and is a Certified Movement Analyst from the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies. She is currently training to become a Dynamic EmbodimentTM Practitioner. She has taught dance in public schools, private schools and non-profit organizations in the U.S.A. and Switzerland. At present, in her role as Artistic Director at the Sunkhronos Institute and serving on the international steering committee of Global Water Dances, Natasha promotes individual and collective transformations by teaching movement workshops, choreographing a site-specific dance, and facilitating conversations, informed by principles of dance education and eco-somatics.
Maria João Alves & Margarida Moura
Ethnomusicology Institute - Center for the Study of Music and Dance (INET-md), Portugal
University of Lisbon, Portugal
Dances with Tradition: Cultural and ethnoartistic bridges between the university and the community
Social involvement, along with instruction and research is an integral function of the University. Since 2019, we have implemented a Community Program entitled Dances with Tradition. With the aim of getting to know the community realities in the traditional dance teaching and choreographic creation, and promoting ethno-artistic practices in traditional dance, this is a project that intends, mainly, to disseminate and share the knowledge developed in Academia. Alloying the community the opportunity to observe, experience, and understand traditional heritage, this project (in-person and remote model) promotes two complementary approaches: a performance that aggregates the choreographic works of university students and invited intergenerational community groups, that work with traditional dances from a contemporary perspective of choreographic creation; and, a space for discussion (life testimonies, forums and panels, and video communications) on teaching and choreographic creation challenges related to traditional dance. The main evidence of the project implementation highlights the need to 1) recreate traditional dances and rework traditional songs with more current sounds, making them more attractive to young audiences while maintaining the "original soul"; 2) conduct fieldwork with traditional communities, to get to know and disseminate the dances as well as to establish the base structure for new choreographic creations; 3) enable the dancers/performers to actively collaborate in the process of choreographic creation within traditional dances; 4) develop scientific work, theses, projects and choreographic works, based on research in ecological context; and, 5) experience and use this traditional heritage for creation, learning and sharing in formal, informal and non-formal education lifelong.
Maria João Alves is an Assistant Professor and an integrated researcher at the Ethnomusicology Institute-Center for the Study of Music and Dance (INET-md). Graduated in Dance, with a Masters in Artistic Performance-Dance and Ph.D. in Human Kinetics-Dance, she has been teaching the undergraduate course in Dance since 1993, having been assistant coordinator between 2010 and 2018. She also teaches in the post-graduate courses of Dance in the Community. She is a scientific advisor for Ph.D. studies in Dance, academic reviewer, and author of several articles in the field of dance (teaching methodology, modern and traditional dance, improvisation and collaborative composition).
Margarida Moura has a Ph.D. in Traditional Dance. She is a teacher in undergraduate and graduate dance courses at Human Kinetics Faculty at the University of Lisbon, in the fields of dance and education, dance in the community, and dance and heritage. She is an external scientific reviewer and scientific advisor for the Dance doctoral degree. She is responsible for sixteen entries in the Encyclopedia of Music in Portugal in the Twentieth Century. (four volumes) and author of an ethnochoreographic writing model of Portuguese Traditional Dance. She is also a researcher at the Ethnomusicology Institute – Center for the Study of Music and Dance (INET-md).
Henrique Amoedo
Dançando com a Diferença & Instituto de Etnomusicologia- Centro de Estudos em Música e Dança (Inet-Md/Pólo FMH), Portugal
Inclusive Dance: Researching into Models and Practices
Following growing international research, knowledge in the field of inclusive dance in Portugal needs to be undertaken. The aim of this presentation is to present a project designed, Inclusive Dance Models and Practices of Artistic and Pedagogical Training in specialized artistic schools (SAS), Companies and Groups including dancers with disabilities in Portugal, aiming at deepening the understanding of inclusive dance in Portugal. Main questions are: What is the current situation in specialized education, community, and professional dance contexts regarding participation of dancers with disabilities? Which structures exist? What selection criteria, evaluation processes and inclusive training models exist? What factors facilitate or restrict the success of dancers with disabilities in their training and career paths? How do the various actors involved perceive this experience? What are the perceptions and meanings of disabled bodies in dance? What is the impact addressing artistic excellence and quality standards? What similarities and specificities exist in comparison with international experiences? The project methodology includes systematic bibliographic review, legislative and document desk field research; semi-structured interviews and focus groups (dancers, dance students, teachers, choreographers, school and company directors). Expected results include the production of guidelines and recommendations for inclusive dance; creative laboratories to trial an inclusive dance training model; open performance experiences; open digital resource repository on inclusive dance – Museo disseminating best practices in this field and to promote the professional development and career opportunities. This resource will provide information, through a directory of inclusive dance organizations in Portugal and internationally; contextualized references on models and practices of inclusive dance development in Portugal and abroad; research studies on inclusive dance practices in Portugal; methodological and didactic recommendations and guidelines for inclusive dance development. This presentation aims to promote future networking opportunities between institutions and structures both nationally and internationally, bridging partnerships between academia and community.
Henrique Amoedo
Artistic Director, Dançando com a Diferença, Instituto de Etnomusicologia- Centro de Estudos em Música e Dança (Inet-Md/Pólo FMH), Portugal
Elisabete Monteiro
Auxiliary Professor, Faculty of Human Kinetics, Lisbon University, Instituto de Etnomusicologia- Centro de Estudos em Música e Dança (Inet-Md/Pólo FMH), Portugal
Paula Lebre
Auxiliary Professor, Faculty of Human Kinetics, Lisbon University, Instituto de Etnomusicologia- Centro de Estudos em Música e Dançav (Inet-Md/Pólo FMH), Portugal
Ana Rita Barata
Artistic director, VO'ARTE, Portugal
Jane Andrewartha
Movement and Dance Education Centre & Laurel Martyn Dance System, Australia
Five steps to a balanced body – as a preparation for dance classes, movement activities …. and life!
Your body moves best when everything is in balance and works together. Based on several decades of working with young dancers and appraising approaches to help them achieve well, this simple approach to preparing the mind and body aims to help students of any dance style or movement practice get the most out of their dance classes – to dance their best! Each of the Five Steps is introduced in simple movements which comprise a basic 10-minute preparation - easy to remember and easy to perform. This easy-to-learn basic preparation provides an effective transition from daily activities to movement, to follow and facilitates the connection of the mind and body that is essential for best performance. The participant is calm, focused and energized. Each step can be expanded to suit the requirements of the movements to follow and the development of the individual dancer. They can be amplified to become the focus of a full session in their own right. Participants in this will learn the basic Preparation with guidance and explanation of each step. Further consideration of ways to expand specific steps will be guided by the interests of the participant group.
Jane Andrewartha is the Director at the Movement and Dance Education Centre. She is a Trustee at the Laurel Martyn Foundation. Andrewartha holds a Diploma in Dance (Teaching and Management), Certificate 1V Training and Assessment, Certificate in Safe and Effective Dance Practice Trinity College London and a Certificate IV Pilates. She is a sessional teacher at Box Hill Institute for the past 15 years. She has been a part of developing VET training and assessment resources for the Australian Dance Institute and Australian College of Dance. She is an Executive for Laurel Martyn Dance System, a senior teacher and assessor for LMDS.
Leah Antonellis
Middlesex University, United States of America
Embracing Neurodiversity and Fostering Autonomy in a Dance Education Curriculum
This presentation will discuss best practices in inclusive dance education through a neurodiverse lens. The work highlights the importance of engaging with and amplifying the voices of autistic and neurodivergent individuals, often underrepresented groups, in the co-creation of dance pedagogy. I will reflect on my current research study which investigates whether autonomy skills in neurodivergent young adults can be ascertained through the implementation of a collaborative creative dance curriculum. The fieldwork was undertaken as a small qualitative case study using an ethically-inclusive participatory approach. The participants were tasked with developing their own material and direction of the project while supported through the process. While dance programming for individuals who benefit from additional support is often developed by professionals in the field, this report focuses on investigating and amplifying the voices of the participants as they design a course suited to their needs. Through my research, I explore whether autonomy skills in neurodivergent young adults can be ascertained through the implementation of a collaborative dance curriculum, and best practices for neurodiverse dance pedagogy. I will share observations and findings from my fieldwork such as the choices made by the participants regarding their preferred learning environments, movement activities, and choreography. I will discuss and suggest methods for dance educators to recognize and enhance opportunities for neurodivergent students to interact with autonomy in the studio and on stage. Audience members will be encouraged to participate in conversation surrounding the topic.
Leah Antonellis (MA, BFA) is an educator and advisor for neurodiverse students and a Ph.D. candidate in Dance Studies at Middlesex University in London. She has developed several inclusive movement curriculums in both public and private studio settings throughout the US. Her research focuses on the empowerment of autistic and neurodivergent young adults through autonomy support and the incorporation of their voices in dance programming.
Prisca Atite
Dance Adventure Studios, Uganda
AGWARA the Hunters Movements
Ugandan Traditional / Ethnic dances are performed to represent a particular culture/tribe making the performances significant through the nature of their choreographic concept. In my workshop, I am interested in sharing the joy of Agwara dance originating from the Alur (West Nile) region bordering Congo and Sudan. This dance imitates the movements of the hunters who carefully sneak up to not frighten the animals. Agwara gets its name from the local trumpets, which are known as agwaras which produce a sound that is similar to that of the passing flies. This edifice of movement concentrates on the customs and beliefs of tribes incorporating them into the presentations conveyed by the dancers. They articulate the purpose of understanding traditions first before engaging in their artistic manipulation to achieve the quest for identity recognition through the movement patterns. The children and youth will relate to the process of creation of movements to achieve discipline, teamwork, and self-esteem that come with dancing to feel a sense of belonging, friendship, mentorship, and teamwork.
Prisca Atite...
Casey Avuant & Wen Guo
Elon University, United States of America
Dance and Community Engagement in the Private Sector: An Empirical Study on the Current Trends and Challenges of Dance-Based Community Engagement Practices
Community engagement has become an increasingly prevalent part of dance education for young dancers. Our paper responds to the need for additional research on community engagement activities in private sector dance studios in the United States. Community dance facilitators typically aim to enrich the lives of the participants involved and build connections to various populations in their surrounding areas and beyond. Using a combined qualitative and quantitative approach, we provide an in-depth look into the current types of community engagement activities that studio owners are implementing in their programming and analyze specific motivations for conducting community engagement events in their specific regions. We also consider the challenges and obstacles that private dance studio owners face when conducting community engagement activities with their students and aim to provide practical suggestions for those hoping to increase their activity in this area. These results lend ideas for future research on community engagement to continue to develop this field of study.
Dr. Casey Avaunt is an Assistant Professor of Dance at Elon University. She has twenty years of experience in dance education. She has published in Theatre, Dance, and Performance Training Journal and has a forthcoming article in Theatre Symposium and the Journal of Dance Education with co-author, Dr. Wen Guo
Dr. Wen Guo is an Assistant Professor of Arts Administration. She studies a broad array of topics in arts administration and cultural policy with both qualitative and quantitative methods. She is a recent research fellow of the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP) affiliated with Indiana University, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Art Schools Network. She has published peer-reviewed articles in The Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society, Studies in Art Education, Visual Inquiry, Artivate: A Journal of Entrepreneurship in the Arts, and the American Journal of Arts Management.
Lerna Babikyan
Cati Contemporary Dance Artists Association, Turkey
Embodying Indigenous: Dancing Through Alphabets, Graphic Designs and Enrich Creative Dance Expressions
Human beings have been graphitizing personal and collective dreams, memories, rituals, various emotions, experiences and transmitting knowledge throughout history by using their body, colours, clay and many other materials. Dance art, which creates constant living and changing graphics in the space with the body holds the key for us to connect with humankind’s collective memory, exposing this potential, experience and transforming it beyond words. This workshop primarily aims to offer a conduit that connects our body and cultural roots by using alphabets. Also, it targets to enrich creative dance practice for further choreographic works. Embodying letters and graphics, improvising and voicing them, connecting with the character designs of indigenous cultures via dance and movement opens up a common space to encounter new bodily expressions, different ways of being, feeling, learning, understanding and empathizing. The workshop context is a continuity of the artist’s long-term interest and research on dance and the alphabet’s interactions. She first started to examine the Armenian Alphabet, where her roots belong, which also will be the main material of this workshop. The interpretative method is to be used for different purposes such as cultural education, body awareness, social work, performing arts practices or interdisciplinary expressive art sessions by teachers and facilitators from varied fields.
Lerna Babikyan has been serving the dance field in Turkey as an independent dance trainer, performer over 20 years. She performed in many local and international dance festivals as a dancer and choreographer. Her deep interest in alternative pedagogies provoked her to spread the miracles of creative dance pedagogy through body friendly, empowering, creative, confident dance expressions for participants from all ages and varied social levels. Accordingly, she has been leading teacher trainings on creative dance and dance-based learning programs in Turkey since 2015. Her bachelor degrees on Adult Education and Dance have been fostering each other in learning environments, dance studios, on stage, urban performances and international artistic residencies. Her desire to encounter with dance in different fields of art carried her to write performative poetries, ceramic works, facilitate experimental movement sessions in nature and direct short dance movies. She has done her MA researches in Istanbul, wrote a book called “Moving Pedagogy” in Turkish and continues her teaching activities both remote&live in Istanbul, where she still lives.
Mary Bawden
DA:NCE (dance awareness: no child exploited)
Healthy or Harmful: National Experts talk about Children’s Dance
Over the last decade, children under 12 have become increasingly hypersexualized through dance at younger and younger ages. The APA report on 'The Sexualization of Girls' revealed the negative effects that adult, sexualized messages are having on the healthy development of children in adult costumes, choreography and music. In June 2019 at the CESE(Coalition to End Sexual Exploitation) Summit, national leaders gathered in Washington DC to add their voice to DA:NCE(dance awareness: no child exploited) resources. These experts served to articulate the researched value of healthy dance but raised serious concerns about how harmful dance grooms children for unhealthy outcomes reaching far beyond the dance studio. With definitions aimed to clarify the trajectory of a pornified culture and ‘corporate paedophila’ (a term coined by researcher Phillip Adams), this presentation shows how children’s hypersexualized dance grooms children for sexual abuse, commodification, and for the financial benefit of adults who own and manage corporate business entities. Children deserve to learn and experience the gift of dance in safe environments that do not sexualize and/or exploit them. Children deserve to love dance, their bodies, and themselves. Children deserve to be protected from sexual exploitation.
Solution-based resources at danceawareness.com emphasize the mission, vision and 4 educational objectives of DA:NCE facilitating cultural education, awareness and action on this topic:
• Toolkits
• Ebook
• Educational Presentations
• Professional Videos
• Local & National Petitions
• Sharing dance stories
• DA:NCE Newsletter
• Certification (YPAD & digital)
• Research
Dance Educator and author Mary Bawden received a BA in modern dance from UCRiverside, an MA, and a secondary teaching credential. Several years ago, Mary noticed a cultural shift in children’s dance from healthy movement to harmful movement in adult costumes, choreography and music. This realization birthed a mission to bring international awareness and education to stop the hypersexualization of children in dance. That coincided with a vision to promote the art of dance and its benefits to children by creating educational materials advocating for their safety and protection. Her passion is to expose adults to informed choice.
Sue Cheesman
University of Waikato, New Zealand
Teachers’ voices on Fresh Moves: A New Zealand regional primary school dance festival 20 years old
An independent local regional initiative by the Bay of Plenty Dance organisation, created Fresh Moves Dance Festival that reached a twenty-year milestone in 2021. This research probes how has this festival supported teachers to engage with Dance in the New Zealand curriculum? The presentation hears specifically from differing teachers’ voices - delving into the achievements and the struggles from their varying viewpoints to help chronicle their part in the festival’s journey through the years. It asks: How has this festival empowered these teachers despite the substantial onslaught of change including neoliberal political drivers in education? How has more of a focus on creative dance with a different set theme each year played out? The issues, challenges and successes in participating in this festival over time from specific teachers’ contexts will be unpacked and reflected upon. Findings offer insights into: how the festival plays an important role in supporting dance education within their school communities; and how a local initiative within dance can productively engage a school community in a way, that celebrates the creative spirit and this form of embodied learning.
Sue Cheesman works as a Senior Lecturer in Dance Education in the Division of Education at the University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand within teacher education. She has been for many years a choreographer, teacher and researcher both in New Zealand and the United Kingdom. Her research has centred on dance and disability, dance education and choreographic practice, particularly in relation to site-specific work. Recent publications are the following: Dance Research Aotearoa, Research in Dance Education and several edited collections.
Peter Cook
University of Southern Queensland, Australia
Generalist male teachers advocating for dance and male dancers
This presentation reports on understandings of an innovative approach to developing advocates for dance and young male dancers in teacher education programs. The ultimate aim of the approach is to expose pre-service generalist elementary teachers to dance from a creative perspective by focussing on choreographic practice. The research employs A/r/tography as a theory methodology nexus, given that the participants are considered artists and educators, and that their processes and products are at the core of this scholarly investigation. The approach undertaken by the participants features students’ choreographed video dance projects and related appreciation tasks. The pilot study at the centre of this research considers the experience of six males, either teacher education students or graduates, in a compulsory dance/arts course and the impact of this engagement on their teaching. The participants reflect on their journey within the course and the challenges and triumphs of having their first choreographic dance experience. Significantly, the research highlights the potential of this creative approach for generalist male elementary teachers’, how it enhances their capacity to become advocates for dance and contributes to young male dancers’ de-stigmatisation.
Peter Cook is an Associate Professor Arts Education and Deputy Head of School, Education at University of Southern Queensland Australia, and substantively, focussing on Dance and Creativity in Teacher Education. Peter’s interest and expertise in dance education developed through his 20-year Dance teaching career in secondary and primary schools, including state-wide Dance/Arts positions. Peter’s research centres on understanding learning with and through dance, education, creativity, and their associated practices. His work extends into the interdisciplinarity of creativity in education. Peter’s innovative and interactive PhD was entitled Understanding choreographic practice in an artful, digital dance education.
Cecília De Lima & Elisabete Monteiro
Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal
A Unified Body of Individuals: The Ambiguous Nature of Community
The Mirriam-Webster Dictionary describes 'community' as a unified body of individuals. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, this concept derives from the Latin word 'communitas', being associated with notions of friendly intercourse and fellowship. Also according to this dictionary, in the Medieval Age, this term came to be socially used as a division of people or an association of people having common interests or possessions. Community is, therefore, an ambiguous concept: as it unifies people with common interests in cooperativeness and solidarity, it also divides people into groups, which quite often become closed and defensive with restricted perceptions, views and experiences. In today’s world, where new technologies allow us to travel easily and interact worldwide in only seconds, how should we approach the ambiguous nature of community and concurrently practice an ecologic mode of intercourse? How can the practice of dance contribute to such a discussion? Departing from our experience as dance artists and as professors at a university dance course with a broad spectrum program, we have been exploring this subject by examining: how to prepare students for intervening constructively within all-embracing fields of dance intervention? How to embrace the wide diversity of dance communities? To instigate this discussion we propose to think about (dance) community as a “body of individuals unified” by their difference and idiosyncrasies and by the pursuit of a creative mind-body. And we question further: how is this “body of individuals” experienced in dance? How shall we perceive and practice such a body?
Since 1999 Cecília de Lima has been developing her carrier as a dancer, choreographer and researcher, collaborating with diverse artists throughout Europe. Her research work focuses on the relation of dance with phenomenology, cognitive sciences, somatic practices and artistic education. Her work has been published in several international academic and artistic venues. She holds a Ph.D. in Human Kinetics/ Dance, developed with a grant by FCT (PT) and is a Professor at the University of Lisbon - Dance Course. Additional accolades include Researcher at the Institute of Ethnomusicology (INET-MD), Member of the Centre for Performing Arts (CEAP) and Peer Reviewer for the Journal of Dance & Somatic Practices (UK).
Elisabete Monteiro holds a Ph.D. in Human Kinetics/dance. She is a Professor at the University of Lisbon in the Human Kinetics Faculty (Portugal). She acts as a scientific advisor for several Ph.D. theses and Master's dissertations in dance. Additional accolades include Integrated Researcher at Institute of Ethnomusicology - Centre for studies in music and dance (INET-md/Polo FMH) and Member of the Centre for Performing Arts (CEAP). Monteiro has participated in National and International Congresses. She is the author of several articles on dance teaching, choreographic composition and creative movement experiences. Co-author, of a Creative Dance Manual -an interdisciplinary approach (2018) and she is responsible for workshops in dance in several countries. She serves as the National representative of Dance and the Child International (daCi).
Jacqueline Dreessens
Wild Moves International, Australia
Doing the Hoodie Boogie – engaging the community in conservation through dance and movement’
Wild Moves International was recruited in 2019 by Birdlife Australia to innovatively engage a broader range of the Surf Coast community in Hooded Plover conservation by creating an educational dance and drumming program called 'Hoodie Boogie'. Kinesthetic teaching, or the use of creative movement as a pedagogy, has long been used to convey important stories and messages throughout communities. The ‘Doing the Hoodie Boogie’ project aimed to use this traditional method of storytelling through dance to develop deeper emotional connections between the Surf Coast community and the threatened beach-nesting bird, the Hooded Plover. It aimed to lead people on a journey to a greater understanding of the importance of sharing the beach environment. The creation of the Hoodie Boogie focused on bird-like movements and its typical cryptic behaviour for camouflage and survival. It also served to increase community ownership of beach-nesting bird conservation. Lyrics to the new song include, “If you stomp too close to my nest, I freak out and I can’t rest. If ya stomp too close to my nest, mama freaks out, she may lose her eggs. Hoodie Boogie, dogs on leads! Hoodie Boogie, follow my lead! Hoodie Boogie, take my lead!” The rhythm is a swing groove, easily be played on a ukulele and percussion. The educational program was made possible by Friends of the Hooded Plover, Breamlea and Birdlife Australia. Wild Moves International taught it in local schools, markets, festivals, fundraisers and events to raise awareness of our relationship to the coastal environment through dance.
Jacqueline’s research interest is in performance ritual, sensoriality and creating sacred space through the nexus of Dance. An ethnochoreologist and multidisciplinary artist in choreography and percussion, Jacqui draws her inspiration from nature and the environment, exploring the ecology of place and embodied experience. She is inspired by Indigenous world dance cultures and their expression of connection to ancestral spirit and the land and how this connection fosters a sense of place. In 2017, Jacqueline received a Stepping Stones Scholarship for the Masters of Arts in Ethnochoreology at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick, Ireland. She is a community arts practitioner in Australia.
Heather Fitzsimmons Frey
MacEwan University, Canada
Creating Theatrical Experiences for Early Years Audiences with Flight and Creative Dance
The Urban Wildlife Project theatrical performances for early years audiences (ages 2 – 4) are co-created: according to the Cycle of Co-Inquiry in Flight: Alberta Early Learning and Care Framework, children and adults co-create narratives together, co-imagining possibilities which early childhood educators implement through a responsive play and learning environment. As we explain elsewhere (Ayles et al, 2021, Ayles et al. forthcoming), our creative team has been adapting the Cycle from Flight to our dramaturgical process, interpreting how young children make meaning from theatrical experiences through their play. Aiming to develop immersive, play-full theatrical experiences for children, our current focus is on four distinct and locally common wild animals: chickadees, hares (jackrabbits), magpies, and squirrels. In the autumn of 2021, we conducted several artist residencies with our co-researchers, the children of Early Learning at MacEwan (ELM), and their educators. The workshops explored design elements, play provocations, and especially, movement and dance. Actor-dancers offered dance provocations inspired by Joyce Boorman, Sally Carline, Ann Kipling Brown and Fitzsimmons Frey’s experiences with the Alberta Children’s Creative Dance Theatre (1977-1990). Both frames centralize children and children's expressions. Through play and exploration, dancers and children co-imagined meaningful movement vocabulary together. We were curious about how the dance vocabulary we developed with children from the early years demographic, will inspire future audiences to dance, play, and co-imagine possibilities together. How will applying Flight’s play-based Cycle of Co-Inquiry, and creative dance methodologies, influence the project as a whole? Ayles, Robyn, Heather Fitzsimmons Frey, and Margaret Mykietyshyn. (2022). Harnessing the Power of Flight: Devising Responsive Theatre for the Very Young, in Routledge Companion to Drama in Education, eds. Mary McAvoy and Peter O’Connor. Routledge. Ayles, Robyn, Heather Fitzsimmons Frey, Margaret Mykietyshyn. (2021). Flight Paths and Theatre for Early Years. Critical Stages 22. http://www.critical-stages.org/22/flight-paths-and-theatre-for-early-years-audiences/. Boorman, Joyce. (1969). Creative Dance in the First Three Grades. Don Mills, Ontario. Boorman, Joyce. (1969). Creative Dance Grades 4 – 6. Don Mills, Ontario. Carline, Sally. (2011). Lesson Plans for Creative Dance. Champaign, IL : Human Kinetics.
Heather Fitzsimmons Frey is an Assistant Professor of Arts and Cultural Management at MacEwan University, Edmonton. Her research focuses on performance for, by, and with young people. Details about aspects of the Urban Wildlife Project are published in Critical Stages (2021) and in the Routledge Handbook for Drama in Education (2022) (both with Robyn Ayles and Margaret Mykietyshyn). Other recent work is published in Girlhood Studies, Journal of Childhood Studies, Theatre Research in Canada, Theatre Research International, and as chapters in Children’s Literature and Imaginative Geography (Wilfrid Laurier 2019) and Moving Together: Dance and Pluralism in Canada (Wilfrid Laurier 2021).
Robyn Ayles is an Assistant Professor in Technical Theatre at MacEwan University in Edmonton, Canada. She is a practicing theatre designer and a member of the Associated Designers of Canada. Her research is primarily based on Scholarly Artistic Activity. She has designed many Theatre for Young Audiences productions and more recently has worked with Heather Fitzsimmons Frey devising theatre for the early years. She has worked to create accessible theatre for the deaf, including performances that incorporated ASL interpreters as part of the production.
Jamie Leach is an Assistant Professor in the Bachelor of Early Childhood Curriculum Studies program in the Department of Human Services and Early Learning at MacEwan University, Edmonton, Canada. Her core research area is children’s social-emotional development with a focus on how their interactions and communication develop during social play. She is also actively involved as a research team member of Flight: Alberta’s Early Learning and Care Framework. Her recent published work can be found in Early Education and Development, Infant and Child Development, Journal of Research in Childhood Education, and Journal of Early Childhood Research.
Jennifer Florey
daCi USA- Member at Large, United States of America
Supporting Youth Dance Leadership the daCi Way
Constant changes we experience regardless of the pace of technology or the disruptions of a global pandemic include the phenomenon of aging, the passing of the baton, and the transfer of leadership from one generation to the next. Youth will always be tomorrow’s leaders. This transfer of power and authority will always happen. What are we doing as dancers and educators to prepare the future leaders of dance education for tomorrow? The daCi USA organization hosts monthly leadership training workshops for middle school, high school, and college-age dancers to provide mentorship and experiences for young people to cultivate and exercise leadership skills. Opening space to hear the thoughts and voices of young dancers allows the daCi USA board members and youth participants to enjoy new insights that are fresh and real in regards to the needs and interests of the leaders of tomorrow. Monthly digital zoom meetings are providing a platform for young people to learn, grow, develop their talents, and effectively lead in both their communities and the nation. The daCi Youth Leadership Training Program is not a space where youth arrive to “sit and get” information about how they “should” be leaders. It is a space of co-creation where the youth voices take leadership in creating and designing the experiences they would like to have to develop their skills. By leading conversations, partnering in planning, and brainstorming in an intergenerational leadership group, young dancers are learning skills in arts advocacy, event planning, communications management, and content creation. These dancers are our future daCi, NDEO, and local arts council board members. In this session members of the daCi USA board along with youth participants in the Youth Leadership Workshop series will share their experiences within the initiative including details on how and why they created the daCi Youth Leadership Training series and the impact of the workshops have had on them. Sample agendas, learning activities, and discussion prompts will be shared with participants to use in their mentorship practices.
Jennifer Florey is the dance educator at Castle Dome Middle School in Yuma, Arizona. Before moving to middle school, Florey was the dance educator at Kofa High School for eight years. Florey graduated from Hope College in 2012 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Dance Education under the direction of Nicole Flinn and received her Master of Arts in Dance Education from the University of North Carolina Greensboro under the direction of Dr. Mila Parrish. Florey currently holds the position of Treasurer for the Arizona Dance Education Organization and Member at Large for the Dance and the Children International board.
Sara Malan-McDonald is a dance artist, a freelancing academic, and a movement storyteller who specializes in intergenerational and community work. She currently teaches a variety of collegiate dance courses at Glendale Community College in Glendale, Arizona. Sara is the founding director of C3 Dance, teaching dance as a means of expression for all people. Through her dance company, SM2Dance, she works to address complex issues from a distinctly feminine, feminist perspective. Additionally, Sara serves as a Member at Large on the board for Dance and the Child International USA. Sara earned her MFA in Dance from Arizona State University and two BFA degrees, in Dance and Art History, at Brigham Young University.
Dana Lambert is a fledgling professional dance educator in her first year as a full-time ballroom dance teacher at Alta High School in Sandy, Utah. While earning her Bachelor of the Arts degree in K-12 Dance Education at Brigham Young University, she taught students of all ages. She taught children’s integrative creative dance to elementary students through the BYU Arts Bridge program, various ballroom styles to collegiate students in the university’s American Social and Country Dance program, and the elements of dance to middle school students during her student teaching experience. Twice during her undergraduate career, Lambert was a member of BYU’s Kinnect Dance Company, a student outreach performance dance company with a specific focus on developing teaching, creative, and performing skills in its members. Lambert currently is an assistant to the board for the USA Chapter of Dance and the Children International.
Dr. Kathryn Austin has spent the past 40 years teaching dance in the private sector, as well as experience in higher education, community programs and K-12. She is currently teaching middle and high school dance at Osceola County School for the Arts in addition to running her private studio of 31 years. Dr. Austin has many years of Board service and presentation experience with NDEO as well as daCi-USA. She is a Fellow of the British Association of Teachers of Dancing and specializes in traditional Scottish Highland and National dance.
Joy Guarino
daCi USA, SUNY Buffalo State College, United States of America
Dance and Civic Engagement at Home and Abroad
Now more than ever it is critical to develop students as active citizens, clearly connecting academic program learning outcomes with opportunities to address community priorities, both at home and abroad. Dance at SUNY Buffalo State College delivers a liberal arts education and embraces a civic and community engagement philosophy in all aspects of the program. In addition to rigorous studio training that enhances the physical experience of the art form, the curriculum is designed to deepen students understanding of the cultural, historical, and social, as well as aesthetic, value of dance to our world. This community and civically engaged program fulfills dance students’ distinct aspirations while addressing local and global societal priorities. These experiences are supported by the Civic and Community Engagement Office on campus, which facilitates a broad array of short-term and virtual community-engaged applied learning programs. The unique learning environments brought on by COVID-19 have allowed for transitions from traditional to virtual interactions in new and creative ways that give rise to exciting possibilities in the future. Both traditional and virtual experiences allow students to ‘travel’ and interface with faculty and global communities to develop deeper experiences with cultures different from their own and to build important civic skills. Successful projects require intentional course development with clear learning outcomes, defined vocabulary, and an understanding of both course requirements and community priorities. In addition, a degree of flexibility is necessary when developing and implementing local, national, and international civic-engaged dance experiences, particularly while maintaining a commitment to the collaborative process. The presenters have coordinated nearly a dozen recent and upcoming programs connecting students to dance course content and cultural learning opportunities and will provide in-depth background information and promising practices for building experiences that successfully support student participants and deepen respect and appreciation for diverse communities. Pre-pandemic practices will be highlighted, such as storytelling, cultural awareness, and integrated applications while discussing the crossovers to virtual settings. Participants will explore opportunities to connect the dance discipline to civic priorities, through remote, online, or in-person learning using a unique community-engagement quality component taxonomy and come away with potential plans for course integration with a local or global partner.
Joy Guarino is the Interim Director of Global Engagement and Professor of Dance. She earned her MFA from Temple University and holds a New York State Teacher’s Certification in Dance. Professor Guarino impresses upon her students that a culture’s values are embodied in its dance forms, conveying expression, identity, and respect and regularly engages her students in study abroad, civically engaged experiences across the globe. Joy conducts and presents her scholarship on kinesthetic learning, service-learning, and civic engagement nationally and internationally to inform others on promising practices for guiding quality community-engaged experiences. She enjoys working collaboratively with partners all over the world.
Laura Hill Rao directs Buffalo State College’s Civic and Community Engagement Office where she oversees Buffalo State’s role and responsibility as SUNY’s urban-engaged anchor institution. Rao has grown the CCE from a small, externally funded initiative to its current campus-wide effort comprised of six units focused on student engagement and community partnerships. Rao is an experiential learner herself, with significant background in high-impact experiential education. She holds an M.S. in Environmental Education from Lesley University through the Audubon Expedition Institute's experiential, community-based Master's degree program, and a B.A. in Psychology from SUNY Buffalo.
Ashley Gyarmati
Trent University, Canada
Moving the Medium as the Message through The Ecstasy of Rita Joe and The REDress Project into Elementary Classrooms
This lecture/movement workshop explores the potential of introducing another side of Canada’s history to students at the elementary level through movement that scaffolds dance to help understand difficult concepts, such as implications of colonialism and social justice issues, related to Canada’s missing and murdered women and girls crisis. The goal of this research is to review the current scholarly literature regarding the possibilities for students to engage with the traumatic historic and current circumstances that our Indigenous people have experienced through different multimodalities, fostering “engaged witnessing” in Holocaust education. The critical literacy framework of “engaged witnessing”, developed by Lori Gubkin, Associate Dean and professor at the School of Arts and Humanities at California State University, is used to suggest the benefits of using dance as a modality that goes beyond the use of language to communicate the events that took place in the Holocaust. Although we are educating the post-Holocaust generation, this genocide is much closer to home with an estimated 1200+ missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. As Canadian philosopher, Marshall McLuhan’s theory states “…‘the medium is the message,’ because it is the medium that shapes and controls the scale and form of human association and action,” I propose that educators combine the use of dance in addition to Indigenous voices to allow students to learn about colonial trauma in meaningful, non-objectifying ways that do not put students at risk of personal trauma, and still legitimize the voices, stories and spreading the message of Canada’s MMIWG.
Ashley Gyarmati is truly a lifelong learner by simultaneously completing her graduate studies and teaching as a full-time elementary special education teacher. She has her BFA in dance and B.Ed (2014), M.Ed (2017) from York University and is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in Indigenous Studies at Trent University with a focus on reconciliation through arts pedagogy for education. With the belief any student can dance, Ashley’s research interests are centred on dance education using dance as a modality for students to access their own experiences to understand difficult, but necessary social justice concepts within the Ontario curriculum
Chara Huckins
University of Utah Beverly Taylor Sorenson Arts Learning Program, United States of America
Connecting Through a Kinesthetic Lens
Teaching dance virtually for my school community brought new challenges, discoveries, opportunities, and rewards. During this time, each Zoom square became a proscenium arch for the student’s virtual stage. In this workshop, participants will explore through movement the physical and cognitive aspects of using the Zoom camera as a springboard. This idea provides for exploration, traversing through, as well as discovering our personal virtual space. Participants will improvise using photographic imagery that cross-cuts the curriculum with language arts. They will also discover the connection between dance and our virtual stage, delving into the causal link between movement, and one’s surrounding space. The workshop will culminate in a virtual choreographic piece, created by the gathering of dancers, individuals, and participants, learning through each other’s environment. We will explore not only the external environment but also the intrinsic creative value and ideas generated through these virtual spaces, thereby opening space for movement inspiration. This concept can be adapted for in-person learning. Participants will acquire tools to use for movement-based learning activities that deepen learning and teach the core curriculum. Participants will leave with lesson plans and digital teaching supplies.
Chara Huckins is a dance artist, choreographer, and educator. As a certified educator, she has brought the magic of dance to students of all ages and abilities as well as teachers with her performances, dance classes, choreography, and professional development workshops. She performed both contemporary and historical modern dance with Repertory Dance Theatre. Chara holds an M.Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction Creative Arts in Learning from Lesley University and a BFA in Modern Dance from the University of Utah. She is a dance educator for the Beverly Taylor Sorenson Arts Learning Program where she inspires hundreds of students to learn, create, and perform.
Shola Ismail
Khulcha Theatre School of Dance/daCi Jamaica, Jamaica
Lockdung' but we'nuh knock dung':Tens coping during the pandemic.
The Covid-19 virus has crept into our lives crossing continental borders and altering life as we knew it. The drastic changes brought on by this virus have not only affected our physical/tangible surroundings but our mental environment. As teens who already had various responsibilities and ways of coping with daily challenges such as the ‘social pandemic’, the abrupt introduction of the covid-19 pandemic created pandemonium in our lives. With no guidelines on how to survive, we surfed the rough seas of online schooling, quarantining and maintaining good mental health. However, now we have developed tactics and become more technologically savvy so that we could strive to overcome adversity through resilience in this pandemic. As students, we did several activities to keep our minds engaged, and were also there to assist our friends who weren’t coping as well as we were doing. Being a member of a dance school was our escape to express ourselves and unwind in a positive way.
Shola Ismail is an 18-year-old of Manchester High School student from Mandeville, Jamaica who is currently in upper sixth form where she studies Chemistry, Biology, Physics, Pure Mathematics, and Communication Studies. She aspires to become a Chemical Engineer. Ismail is a modern/contemporary dancer at the Khulcha Theatre School of Dance in Mandeville, where she was the Assistant Dance Captain 2019- 2020. She has attended Dance and Child International Conference in Denmark 2015, and has been dancing for more than 8 years.
Celine Nicholson served as the Ridgemount United Church Youth President (2018-2019), the Khulcha Theatre School of Dance, Dance Captain (2019-2020) and President of the Manchester High School Key Club (2020-2021). She is a Co-Founder of the Manchester High School Covid-19 Credit Relief Association (2020- Present) and presently a member of the Manchester High School Prefect Association (2019- present). She served as Student’s Council Event Co-ordinator(2019-2021) and attended the 2018 daCi conference in Australia where she choreographed the dance for the Khulcha presentation.
Enya-Kalia Jordan
Texas Woman's University, United States of America
Higher Education Dance Auditions: Who is Excluded?
The standard higher education/high school dance audition requires prior knowledge of euro-western styles, French-based rhetoric, and expensive attire. Several scholars have problematized this dilemma because admission becomes limited to students who can afford extensive ballet and modern training. Thus, not all students feel empowered to share their stories and are afforded the opportunities a collegiate dance education offers. This experiential workshop utilizes a critical historical methodology to address ways educators can include and uplift diverse perspectives. This lecture demonstration allows participants to embody the material while mapping the history of auditions and the discourse surrounding social change. This session will discuss ways educators can implement antiracist pedagogy by making thought-provoking, encouraging, and equitable shifts to the dance higher education audition process. As a vehicle to decenter whiteness, educators must move away from Eurocentric language and grant admission to students solely on their ability to perform Euro-western dance forms. This workshop will explore ways to transform traditional audition spaces into student-centred, nonhierarchical, gender-neutral, and collaborative learning environments to foster creative and artistic choices through movement exercises and in-depth discussion. This experimental workshop demonstrates how conscious teaching of aesthetics within diverse genres better supports BIPOC dancers, dancers with different body types, dancers with disabilities, LGBTQ+ dancers, and the aging population. Auditionees are evaluated for their use of polyrhythms, community and collaborative spirit, self-confidence, and dynamic stylization rather than their ability to assimilate to “white” dance forms. This workshop aims to be a vehicle for restorative justice by critically investigating ways to reshape dance history’s trajectory.
Enya-Kalia Jordan is a choreographer, researcher, and teaching-artist, from Brooklyn, New York. She received a Bachelor of Arts from SUNY Buffalo State in 2017, a Master of Fine Arts from Temple University in 2019, and began her doctoral studies at Texas Woman's University in 2020. Her research includes cultivating narratives based on the black feminist perspective, and equity in dance education. She also art directs a movement-based artist collective, Enya Kalia Creations.
Nuša Jurjevič & Vesna Geršak
University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
A Model of Learning Through Artistic Experience: Making Connections Between Children, Teachers, Artists, and Researchers
Jurjevič and Geršak will present a model of learning through artistic experience developed at the Faculty of Education in Ljubljana. The model follows the goals of arts and culture education by building experiential, cooperative learning with and through arts and developing a sensitivity to dance visual arts and music. In the project, primary school students and preschoolers worked with a museum curator, a choreographer, a visual artist, a music artist and student teachers from the Faculty of Education on themes (e.g. the Factories, the Middle Ages). The studies conducted used different methodological instruments (visual tests, unstructured interviews, SWOT analysis and portfolio analysis). Students had the opportunity to embody selected content, to express themselves freely through dance, visual arts and music, and to actively participate in the whole process – from museum visits to dance performances. An important aspect of building the children's self-esteem was the experience of performing on stage, regardless of their abilities. The student teachers, who were actively involved in the entire process from the original idea to the final performance, gained insight into various cross-curricular ways of integrating dance, art, history, social studies, and music. Teachers, artists, and curators were motivated to collaborate creatively and expand their knowledge in arts and cultural education. The results showed that students responded positively through their emotions to the integration of dance, visual arts, and music into the learning process and expanded their conceptual fields of the topics discussed.
Nuša Jurjevič studied illustration at the Academy of fine arts and design and primary school teaching at the Faculty of Education, University of Ljubljana. She received a Prešeren Award from the Faculty of Education and an Award from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design for her master's thesis. She is researching the role of art and artistic experience in the pedagogical context while working as a professional illustrator and cooperating with the Faculty of Education as an assistant and doctoral student in the field of art in education.
Vesna Geršak (Ph.D.) is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Education, University of Ljubljana, where she teaches creative movement and dance in early childhood and primary school teacher education programs. Her pedagogical and scientific work includes embodied approaches to learning and teaching, dance pedagogy, and the integration of arts into the learning process. She is developing a model of student-teacher-artist collaboration through arts and culture education projects. She is the Slovenian representative of Dance and the Child International.
Ema Marinčič is employed as a senior curator for education at the Museum and Galleries of Ljubljana. Her pedagogical work is dedicated to the development of various approaches to better connect cultural heritage with children and families. Her programmes contain elements of creative movement, puppetry, and drama expression, as well as elements of watchfulness. She is the author of the family guide With Ljuba and Ana let's go to Ljubljana, which she developed for families to better understand the permanent exhibition on the history of the city of Ljubljana. She also co-authored the Emona from E to A, a guide for the Archaeological park Emona. Her sincere wish is to attract more people to museums, where they could creatively enjoy their free time.
Urša Rupnik (Slovenia) is a freelance dance artist, dancer, choreographer and dance pedagogue. She cooperates with the University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Education; Alma Mater Europaea, Dance Academy Ljubljana; Conservatory of Music and Ballet Ljubljana, Ballet Collage. Her work includes artistic creation, staging and performing as well as teaching and mentoring with a focus on participatory dance pedagogy. She is a Ph.D. student at the University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Education, working on the integration of contemporary dance principles into higher education.
Susan Koff
New York University, United States of America
Dance Education: A Redefinition
This panel consists of the main author of a recently published book (Susan Koff) and authors of several chapters in the book, each telling the story of how this book came together through individual research, culminating in its completed statement of definition. Dance Education: A Redefinition redefines the nature of dance pedagogy today, setting it within a holistic and encompassing framework, and argues for an approach to dance education from a social-cultural and philosophical perspective. In the past, dance education has focused on the learning of dance, limited to Western-based societies, with little attention to how dance is learned and applied globally. This book seeks to re-frame the way dance education is defined, approached and taught by looking beyond the privileged Western dance forms to compare education from different cultures. Structured into three parts, this book examines the following essential questions: - What is dance? What defines dance as an art form? - How and where is dance performed and for what purpose? - How do social contexts shape the making and interpretation of dance? The first part covers the history of dance education and its definition. The second part discusses current contexts and applications, including global contexts and the ability to apply and comprehend dance education in a variety of contexts. (This section includes chapters by Ann Kipling Brown and John-Mario Sevilla). This book opens up definitions, rather than categorizing, so that dance is not presented in a hierarchical form. The third part continues to define dance education in ways that have not been discussed in the past: informal contexts. (This section includes chapters by Alfdaniels Mabingo and William S. Huntington-Duggan). The book then returns to the original definition of dance education as a way of knowing oneself and the world around us, ending on the philosophical application of this self-knowledge as a way to be in the world and to engage with others, regardless of background. Winner of the 2021 Ruth Lovell Murray Book Award from the National Dance Education Organization (NDEO). Curator of the personal memorabilia collection of Laurel Martyn OBE.
Susan R. Koff is a Clinical Professor in the Dance Education Program at NYU/Steinhardt. Dr. Koff’s academic and service activities are in the area of Dance Education. She currently serves as the Chair of the Board for Dance and the Child International (daCI). Publications are in the Journal of Dance Education, Research in Dance Education, and Childhood Education. This presentation is based on the January release of Dance Education, A Redefinition through Methuen/Bloomsbury, London.
Ann Kipling Brown, Ph.D., Professor Emerita, worked for many years in the Arts Education Program in the Faculty of Education, the University of Regina in Canada. Working in dance education she focuses on assisting children, youth and adults to learn in, through and about dance and to find the passion and personal expression in dance. Teaching includes dance pedagogy, curriculum development, the role of creative dance, dance composition, and movement notation and her research concentrates on the role of the arts/dance in people’s lives and the development of culturally sensitive programs in community, education and professional programs.
John-Mario Sevilla, former director of 92Y Harkness Dance Center, Dance Education Laboratory and New York City Ballet Education, hails from Kaʻehu, Maui. John-Mario’s choreography has appeared in New York City at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, LaMaMa, NYU Steinhardt, Movement Research at Judson Church, 92Y Harkness Dance Center, Dance Theatre Workshop, Columbia University, ABC No Rio, the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, The Asia Society and Bronx Academy of Art and Dance. John-Mario is a student of the hula with Kumu Hula Hōkūlani Holt and Kumu Hula June Ka‘ililani Tanoue.
Alfdaniels Mabingo, Ph.D., is a Ugandan dance researcher, scholar, performer, and educator. From his ancestral village, Mbuukiro, on the shores of Lake Victoria in Uganda, he has taught dance courses at Makerere University in Uganda, New York University in the U.S., the University of Auckland in New Zealand, and Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts in Jamaica. A recipient of the prestigious Fulbright fellowship, Mabingo’s research weaves decolonization, interculturalism, postcolonialism, dance pedagogy, creative economies, and African philosophy. Mabingo’s latest book is titled ‘Ubuntu as Dance Pedagogy: Individuality, Community, and Inclusion in Teaching and Learning of Indigenous Dances in Uganda.’
William S. Huntington-Duggan received an MA in Dance Education from NYU Steinhardt in 2019. He also worked in dance administration and currently works in faculty affairs at NYU School of Professional Studies. His academic interests include indigenous and inclusive pedagogy in the arts and education as well as queer retellings of historical figures in European and Western theatrical arts. Also interested in masculinities in dance education and the relationship between society, public policy, and gender/sexual identity in young adults and adolescents.
Neva Kralj
Ljubljana, Slovenija
Enhancing Toddlers' Motor, Social and Communicative Skills with a Dance Program
Interest in embodied approaches in education is growing, but still are dance and body expression in the education system often omitted. The kindergarten is a very important environment to encourage a child's movement engagement, learning about self and establishing a relationship with others through movement and creative dance. At the presentation, Neva focuses on dancing in kindergarten with toddlers aged 18 to 24 months as a way of movement expression and non-verbal communication. The research aimed to investigate the suitability of a dance program, adapted for toddlers, focusing on the development of toddlers' motor, social and communicative skills. The program was implemented in an average kindergarten for ten weeks, three times a week. It is based on "Ways of Seeing approach" (Tortora, 2006), "Creative movement as a learning approach" (Geršak, 1916; Kroflič, 1999) and Laban movement analysis. Twenty-six toddlers participated, divided into two groups: experimental (n=12) and control (n=14), and their teachers (n=4). Seven toddlers and their parents were also included as the case studies. The author derives from understanding dance as spontaneous movement and nonverbal expression as a powerful communication tool with young children. Dance enhances not only the child's physical, but also cognitive, emotional and social development. The findings of the research make an important contribution to understanding the importance of a dance program for early development and in extending existing approaches to working with toddlers. The program will also be presented via video material and a short demonstration with participants' own embodied experiences.
Neva Kralj is an experienced dance pedagogue and choreographer, who specializes in assistance through art, working as a self-employed artist. She received her MA in dance-movement therapy in Slovenia and holds a WOS (Ways of Seeing) certificate for working with children and families. Neva is currently a Ph.D. student at the Faculty of Education in Ljubljana in the field of preschool pedagogy. Her dissertation focuses on toddlers' motor, social and communicative skills through a dance program. Her work has been increasingly moving also in the direction of individual and group dance psychotherapy for children and adults.
MoniKa Lawrence
Stella Maris Dance Ensemble/Khulcha Theatre School of Dance, Jamaica/Grand Cayman
Naming Movements Providing Agency and Prominence: Neo-traditional dance as a deconstruction of Jamaican Traditional Practices.
This paper seeks to document and name dance movements in three of Rex Nettleford's seminal works staged for the concert stage, performed by Jamaica's National Dance Theatre Company. These three selected choreographic works are Pocomania (1963), Kumina (1971), and Gherrehbenta (1983). These dances, albeit different, share similar motifs in that they are based on traditional Jamaican dances, music, and folklores. They share similar histories as they have evolved with the narrative of Jamaican people and even in their stylized forms, they represent Jamaican culture. In describing these neo-traditional works, the researcher viewed the meaning and symbolism in the movement and gesture, as portrayed on the concert stage within these choreographic works as 'symbolic action.'The descriptions are complemented by photographs and lecture demonstrations/videos to portray the historical aesthetic and religious significance of these dances. The utilization of photographs gives visual aid to the dance vocabulary described. It facilitates the naming of the folk steps, which is lacking in Caribbean scholarly documentation giving validity and substance to the form. These works have added a wide range of dance vocabulary to the Jamaican landscape and beyond. It is helpful to document the basic dance vocabulary as "there is a logic and inner consistency in the way Caribbean people move that gives to the commonplace crawl, hop, skip, jump, and walk distinctive aesthetic significance” as Nettleford declares (Jamaican 88). "Caribbean dance culture must therefore speak with its own voice" ((Nettleford, Caribbean Dance 89) and as such, the Jamaican vernacular is necessary to express specific dance vocabulary. The branding within this article provides a new language for non-dance practitioners and a codified means of delivering the movements within professional, informal dance, and educational practices.
Dr. MoniKa Lawrence, Associate Professor/Artistic Director Performing Arts, University College of the Cayman Islands, Artistic Director/Founder, Stella Maris Dance Ensemble of Jamaica
Vid Lenard
Faculty of Education in Koper, Slovenija
Dance As Many Ways As You Can
Teaching dance to preschoolers requires dance educators to acknowledge their student's dance capacity. Dance teachers should know how to use dance tools to develop creativity and movement. In this poster session, we will use 5 - 8 different tools to explore the use of creative movement as a way to create dance. Scholars will experience different ways to present ideas to preschoolers and how and when to use the methodology of improvisation and leadership. Most dance teachers in kindergarten stop their lessons at this point, so we will examine the tools of dance elements, dance methods, the art of questions, space, sound, working in pairs or groups, and body parts to explore movement to develop dance. In this workshop, we will connect to different curriculum-based art subjects in a coherent way. We will also acknowledge possible ways of including dance for one to two-year-old toddlers in Preschool.
Vid Lenard has worked for ten years in Kindergarten and has used creative movement as often as possible. For the last five years, he has been a Professor of Dance Education in Faculty of Education in Koper, Slovenija. He is also a fine art critic and Professor of Art History.
Catherine Limbertie
York University, Canada
Toronto: does dance define the city?
All my life I have been “dancing into communities”; growing up in Toronto, one of the most diverse cities in the world, my mother insisted I learn about my Dutch cultural heritage through folk dance classes. Our group of Dutch dancers was frequently invited to perform at festivals throughout the city, province and country. At these events, I learned about other expressions of culture so that I became quite familiar with folklore from around the world. In my current work as a board member for the Community Folk Art Council of Toronto, I have developed close friendships with many cultural communities in our city; in this presentation, I will share the research I have been undertaking on the importance of “dancing into communities”, explaining the history and work of the Folk Art Council in Toronto. I will also demonstrate how folk dancers create community by sharing a film of a Filipino dance ensemble taking a class in preparation for participation at one of Toronto’s many cultural festivals. Toronto’s model of diversity is generally considered a prime reason for its high placement on the list of “Most Livable” cities in the world; in my research, I argue that dance practice is crucial to maintaining the city’s diversity.
Catherine Limbertie is a practicing teacher, folk dancer and Ph.D. candidate at PAMD, York University in Toronto. She has presented her research at many conferences; her paper at the 2014 DaCI conference in Taiwan was subsequently published in Dance Education around the World (Nielsen and Burridge eds.) Routledge 2015.
Anna Mansbridge
Creative Dance Center/Kaleidoscope Dance Company, United States of America
Brain-Compatible Intergenerational Creative Modern Dance Class
This engaging workshop will allow participants to experience the Brain-Based pedagogy of internationally recognized American dance education pioneer Anne Green Gilbert. The class is for adults and children age 8 and above, for those with or without training in any dance genre, and mixed ability groups. We will follow Gilbert’s Five-Part Conceptual Lesson Plan format that creates an environment in which the brain and the body are ready, willing, and able to learn. We will begin with BrainDance, a full body-brain exercise based on the developmental patterns that babies naturally move through in the first year of life, wiring the central nervous system, laying the foundation for sensory-motor development and lifelong learning. Then we will Explore a Dance Concept (Space, Time, Force and Body), Develop Skills, Create, and Cool Down (sharing and reflecting). This way of structuring a dance class is inclusive of different ages, abilities and diverse learning needs, allowing everyone to be successful. It builds community through problem-solving, reflecting, responding, making social and emotional connections with peers and adults, and having fun together. Activities that encourage generations to dance together virtually will be a key component, such as creative explorations using mirroring, and communal folk dances. Participants will come away from this inspiring class mobilized by the power of dance to connect us across generations – on a screen!
Anna Mansbridge, choreographer, dancer and educator, is originally from Australia and the UK, and now resides in Seattle, Washington, USA. She holds a First Class Honours Degree in Dance and Education from Bedford College, UK, and an MFA in Choreography and Performance from Mills College, California, USA. Anna has worked with Anne Green Gilbert since 1999, teaching people of all ages at the Creative Dance Center in Seattle. She also directs Kaleidoscope Dance Company for ages 7-17, founded by Anne in 1981. Anna presents Brain-Compatible workshops in the USA and abroad. She is a past Chair of daCi USA.
Anna Mansbridge
Creative Dance Center/Kaleidoscope Dance Company, UnitedSttaes of America
French and English Dances from the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
This fun and lively workshop is suitable for all ages, for those with or without dance experience, and mixed abilities. We will begin with a quick overview of the role of dance in its cultural context during sixteenth and seventeenth-century France and England. We will reflect on both the social and theatrical role of dance, and we will look at the clothes people wore that influenced how people moved. Participants will learn fun dances such as the Horses and Washerwoman’s Branle from Orchesography, written by a French monk called Thoinot Arbeau, and published in France in 1589. We will dance the Lorayne Alman from The Old Measures, the Inns of Court in London (1570-1675), and an English Country Dance such as the New Boe Peep (The English Dancing Master, John Playford, 1651). Participants will experience how these dances from European history brought people together, creating community and a sense of shared identity and connection.
Anna Mansbridge, choreographer, dancer and educator, is originally from Australia and the UK, and now resides in Seattle, Washington, USA. She holds a First Class Honours Degree in Dance and Education from Bedford College, UK, and an MFA in Choreography and Performance from Mills College, California, USA. In 2000 she founded Seattle Early Dance, dedicated to recreating dances from the European Renaissance and Baroque periods. Anna has choreographed and directed Early Opera productions in Europe and the USA, and she has taught at universities, on early music courses, and daCi Conferences. Anna was the Chair of daCi USA 2017-2020.
Joan Mbabazi
Uganda
Taste of My Land
My workshop is composed of movements from a Ugandan Traditional Dance called Ekizino which is a harvest Celebration dance performed by the Bakiga people from the Kigezi region, the western part of Uganda. Bakiga people perform Ekizino as a way of keeping their bodies warm and strong since they come from a cold mountainous area. It consists of vigorous jumping and dancing with heavy foot stamps. This workshop will enhance the participants’ control of weight and balance in motion. Teaching this dance will equip participants with cultural knowledge about the Bakiga people, the dance, and cultural values which will share the culture as well as connect and bring our worlds together, creating unity while spreading traditional dance knowledge of Ekizino. It will build a strong sense of rhythm for participants since African dances and music is polyrhythmic and builds sustainability. the music will be recorded. Every Ugandan Traditional dance has a story that inspired its creation and performance. without the story, the dance ceases to exist. I, therefore, intend to use storytelling as a tool to guide my participants and help them understand the existence, values, norms, interpretation and execution of the dance. The workshop will benefit ages and impact each of the participants equally regardless of their age. We shall have a warm-up followed by the learning session after which participants will learn a short segment of choreography fusing workshopped movements and other Ugandan traditional dances
Joan Mbabazi holds a Bachelor's Degree of Arts in Arts from Makerere University where she majored in Dance and minored in Drama. she is 23years old and currently a member of Dance theatre Uganda. she is a passionate dancer rooted in traditional dances like Ekizino, Ekitagururo, and Bakisimba, among other Ugandan traditional dances as well as other western dances like Ballet, Jazz, modern and African Contemporary dance. She's hungry to learn and share what she has with other people. Working on different projects like Refugees across spaces has enabled her to continue to strive to use dance to bless and bring people together.
Marissa Nesbit
The University of North Carolina at Charlotte, United States of America
Developing Dance Curriculum for Social-Emotional Learning
The purposeful integration of dance and social-emotional learning (SEL) requires moving beyond identifying connections between dance curriculum standards and SEL competencies to using these connections as the basis for holistic curriculum design. By targeting the mutual synergy between artistic processes and social-emotional development, we seek to foster meaningful two-way integration wherein not only does dance education support SEL but where explicit teaching of SEL skills promotes an artistically rich and rigorous dance learning experience. This paper presents a model for dance curriculum design centred on the five core competencies for social-emotional learning—self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision making—in dialogue with the artistic processes of creating, performing, responding, and connecting in dance. Informed by a pilot action research project investigating the experiences of teachers and students, this model reflects the journey of a dance and SEL program created to support the interests and needs of a new elementary school. As a locally-responsive project, this curriculum is centred in the school community and prioritizes a process-oriented, continually evolving approach to experiencing dance. Input from stakeholders guides the initial curriculum development, while responsiveness and reflection in dialogue with students, materials, and new choreographies drive the lived experience that constitutes the evolving, enacted curriculum. Principles for working within the space of dance/SEL integration will be shared along with specific examples of activities drawn from our lesson experiences. This model for curriculum design presents an opportunity to reflect on the possibilities for transformative dance education.
Marissa Nesbit, Ph.D., MFA (she/her) is deeply committed to the idea that all children should have the opportunity to attain an excellent dance education centred in the arts and that all communities should be supported by strong public schools. As Assistant Professor and Dance Education Coordinator at The University of North Carolina at Charlotte (USA), Dr. Nesbit supports aspiring dance educators to craft rigorous and engaging learning experiences that immerse their students in the creative process. Her teaching interests include improvisation, performance, pedagogy, and curriculum design; her qualitative research projects investigate aspects of dance curriculum and pedagogy in K12 contexts.
Marissa Nesbit & E.E. Balcos
The University of North Carolina at Charlotte, United States of America
Understanding Self, Connecting to Community: Dancing with Somatics and Social-Emotional Learning
Dance educators have long valued embodied learning that engages awareness, reflection, and meaningful connections to others, and many regularly incorporate somatic principles—such as those drawn from Laban/Bartenieff Fundamentals, Body-Mind Centering, Hanna Somatics, and Yoga—into their teaching. Dance also benefits from research adopted in larger educational contexts, such as CASEL’s five areas of SEL competence: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making. By purposefully connecting principles of social-emotional learning and somatics to our work in dance education, we can leverage the strength of these approaches to better prepare our students for growth as artists and humans in a connected dance community. In this workshop, we will explore how somatics can foster SEL in dance in a way that is authentic to the practices in dance education, not as an add-on from another curriculum. Together, we will engage in a somatic movement session focused on imagery; unpack features of somatic pedagogy; discuss the five SEL competencies and examine how they can be actualized through somatic learning; examine ways this approach can be enacted in specific teaching and learning contexts through SAFE—sequenced, active, focused, and explicit—instruction; and reflect on our learning.
Marissa Nesbit, Ph.D., MFA (she/her) is deeply committed to the idea that all children should have the opportunity to attain an excellent dance education centred on the arts and that all communities should be supported by strong public schools. As Assistant Professor and Dance Education Coordinator at The University of North Carolina at Charlotte (USA), Dr. Nesbit supports aspiring dance educators to craft rigorous and engaging learning experiences that immerse their students in the creative process. Her teaching interests include improvisation, performance, pedagogy, and curriculum design; her qualitative research projects investigate aspects of dance curriculum and pedagogy in K12 contexts.
E.E. Balcos, MFA, RSDE is an Associate Professor of Dance at UNC Charlotte. His research interests include developmental and somatic movement practice; its application in teaching children movement for physical and emotional well-being; and exploring the creative process. He has presented and performed at numerous conferences including national Body-Mind Centering Conferences; Annual Somatic Dance Conference & Performance Festival; Dance and Somatic Practices Conference, Coventry, UK; and Body IQ Festival, Berlin, Germany. He is a Registered Somatic Dance Educator through ISMETA. Balcos is a member of Movement Migration and has performed in Mexico, Italy, NYC, and Charlotte, NC.
Gdalit Neuman
York University, Canada
Dancing into the Zionist Community: The Dances of Yehudit Arnon in the Framework of Hashomer Hatzair Zionist Youth Movement in Hungary (1946-7)
Following the brisk, yet brutal Holocaust in Hungary, then 19-year-old Auschwitz survivor Yehudit Arnon, the future founding artistic director of Israel’s Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company, made her way to Budapest. There she quickly became the informal dance captain for the Marxist - Socialist - Labour Zionist Hashomer Hatzair Zionist Youth Movement; working with hundreds of Hungarian child Holocaust survivors on choreographies of protest and empowerment. This paper, which is a culmination of three years of fieldwork in the framework of my doctoral degree, in three countries, on three continents, consists of oral history interviews with over 50 of those former youth, extensive archival work throughout Israel, as well as a community-based dance reconstruction project traces Arnon’s little-known politically-themed repertoire during the immediate years following liberation, and just before she immigrates to Israel in 1948, to identify its impact on participants. Arnon’s choreographies challenged practices of violence and war by presenting Hungarian Jewish youth with then-progressive, alternative worldviews of Marxism and Labour Zionism. In addition to their healing capabilities, I argue that these dances provided a platform for scouts to perform their ongoing transformation from traumatized to triumphant; from Holocaust survivors to New Jews. According to my research, Arnon’s utopian choreographies, as an embodied component of Hashomer Hatzair Zionist Youth Movement’s educational programming, were an effective and important antidote for what ailed Hungarian Jewish youth as well as a vehicle for their induction into the local, and later global, Zionist community.
Gdalit Neuman is a Ph.D. candidate in Dance Studies at York University. She has taught creative dance, improvisation, composition, ballet technique and dance pedagogy at Canada’s National Ballet School and York University’s Department of Dance. Ms. Neuman has written about Israeli folk dance history and created content about Israeli folk dance for an online dance course at York University. Her work is published in Dance International Magazine, Performance Matters journal and Hebrew in Dance Today -Israel’s dance magazine. A chapter on her Ph.D. research is scheduled to be included in the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Jewishness and Dance.
Mamata Niyogi Nakra
Kala Bharati, Canada
Salut Dhitang
Salut Dhitang dance workshop ~ In the context of different Indian classical dance styles, and also various traditional martial arts a practitioner goes through a series of movements before starting to dance. It is referred to as a salutation, also known as Pranaam or Reverence. I have created a similar salutation so that every child can have a series of movements he can go through before he proceeds to dance for a performance, for taking dance classes, for doing his dance practice, or before an activity just to have fun. I have included in this series of movements I am calling Salut Dhitang all the characteristics that are found in a traditional salutation. There is the stretching of the different limbs of our body, it pays respect to the four corners of mother earth, as well as offers his respect to the elders, teachers, and others present sharing the space and activity with him. It is a ritual that helps him to centre his attention and provides him with a sacred moment to start his tryst with the dance activity he is going to be engaged in following Salut Dhitang. To commemorate Kala Bharati's 40th anniversary I will teach this secular salutation at daCi to all participants.
Dr.Mamata Niyogi Nakra has been teaching Bharata Natya for 40 years, at her institution Kala Bharati in Montreal. Her husband, Dr. Harbans Nakra and herself first attended and participated in the daCi conference in London, in 1988. They have presented papers, and workshops at several daCi conferences. Both have published books, and articles and done extensive work to make dance accessible for young learners and worked actively worked so that every child has the opportunity to enjoy their right to dance. The contribution of the Nakras in the area of dance and the child is internationally well known.
Mamata Niyogi Nakra & Carole Poirier
Kala Bharati, Canada
A scientific perspective on the role of dance in whole child education
Mamata Niyogi Nakra talks about ways to increase the happiness quotient for school children through an enlarged vision of whole-child education, which includes music and dance movements along with fun activities such as kite flying and related arts and crafts largely formed by the book Place for Dance in Whole Child Education, a scientific perspective by Harbans Nakra Ph.D. After giving a brief scientific basis for defining whole-child education and the role that dance training can play in achieving its objectives, a model of the human brain-behaviour system based on the view that the brain is an information processing system with input from the sense organs and output that represents behaviour will be presented. Followed by a brief overview of the major publications by Anne Greene Gilbert, Lucy Vincent, Dr. Peter Lovatt etc., the paper will present the work being carried out in Montreal by Team Dhitang, a wing of Kala Bharati through children's dance presentations and workshops at schools, libraries, parks with kite flying as its main lait motif. The second part of the paper deals with the practical aspect of this project. Based on her personal experience, Carole Poirier, a Quebec politician involved in the well-being of the young, talks of ways to implement policies and guidelines to carry out this much-needed addition to the school curriculum. In a crowded field of competing subjects for inclusion in the whole child's education, the authors want to make a strong case for dance to be included as a subject in schools.
Dr. Mamata Niyogi Nakra has been teaching Bharata Natya for 40 years at Kala Bharati, the institution she founded in Montreal. With her husband, Dr. Harbans Nakra, they attended and participated in the daCi 1988 conference in London. They have presented papers, workshops at several other daCi conferences. Both have published books, articles and done extensive work to make dance accessible for young learners and make it possible for children to have the opportunity to enjoy their right to dance. The contribution of the Nakras in the area of dance and the child and Bharata Natya is internationally well known.
Carole Poirier, Députée d’Hochelaga-Maisonneuve de 2008 à 2018, titulaire d’une maîtrise de gestionnaire en administration publique et d’un baccalauréat en administration et actuellement à la maîtrise en comptabilité. Elle a contribué à la naissance du Centre communautaire Hochelaga. Femme de cœur, de solidarité et féministe, son objectif : favoriser l’autonomie financière des femmes. Elle est la marraine de la Loi instituant le mois d’octobre comme mois du patrimoine hispanique au Québec adoptée en juin 2018 et du projet de loi pour abolir les barrières aux personnes trans immigrantes. Vice-présidente de Kala Bharati et Fraîchement jeudi (média culturel pour la communauté LGBTQ+2).
Turner Norman
Canada
The Virtual Locker: An Ethnographic Approach to Online Dance
The world shares knowledge and experiences using the internet, creating a community with no borders. Previously, street dance instruction was carried down from person-to-person, adult to youth inside a net-working circuit that is now accessible online. YouTube gained popularity in the early 2000s and was quickly adopted by locking and other hip hop practitioners and artists.
The YouTube application is utilized to showcase and expand the knowledge of the locking form.
Employing Kozinets' classification of centralities (2010) is applied to the form of locking and locking tutorials found on YouTube. These centralities are also used to categorize motives found in each locking tutorial. Movement descriptions and execution were also analyzed from each video and the creation of a locking glossary was created. I argue the validity of learning street dance online through YouTube tutorials in conjunction with studying with a teacher; as well as the effectiveness of the locking movements presented. Qualitative data was collected using active participation within the texts to assess the accuracy of the movements as well as the number of viewership each tutorial received.
Turner Norman is a dance artist, teacher, and researcher based in Toronto, Ontario; he is also the Artistic Director of Illustrated Movement based in Palmerston, Ontario. Norman received his training in Humboldt, Saskatchewan before moving to Toronto. He graduated from the School of Toronto Dance Theatre. After graduation, he attended York University to complete his B.F.A and M.A. in dance studies. Norman trains and teaches various genres of dance. His research is on dance pedagogy with a focus on hip hop and funk dance.
Nancy Paradis
LA Dance Moves, United States of America
Artistic Director
I want to offer my services as a guest lecturer From my 30 years teaching and 10 years as an artistic director, I've created some topics that I'm very passionate about. I can craft a topic to best fit your program. Some of the topics that may be interesting are: Dance on Film: Breaking down all the steps for a successful project from storyboarding, shot design, filming, editing. The age of virtual concerts we are now in. Choreography and your own Artistic Process: What it means to have a professional career in dance. A look at the commercial world: being on set of a recent Netflix job 2020 How to be a more valuable dancer Injury Prevention/Nutrition overhaul Musical Theater and Versatility My life as a Professional Ballerina turned Commercial Dancer turned Healing story Teller. I am passionate about the topics that dancers are most affected by especially in these current challenging times. Thank you.Nancy Paradis
Nancy Paradis began her career on the east coast performing with the Washington, Richmond and Louisville Ballet Companies. In Los Angeles, Nancy performed and choreographed in the commercial world and as a Madonna impersonator, in China on a national tour. She has worked in the fitness market and appears in Power Core Yoga Videos and Crunch Fitness. Nancy has taught as an adjunct professor at UC Irvine, Loyola Marymount University and currently Moorpark College. As an instructor/choreographer and co-producer she mentors young artists by collaborating with the music, theatre and film departments. Nancy co-authored the book, "Bringing Value, Solving Problems and Leaving a Legacy." Nancy is the Artistic Director of her company LA Dance Moves.
Hannah Park
Iona College, United States of America
The collaborative dance of social justice and community: Social entrepreneurship and activism through dance pedagogy
In dance and creative processes, community engagement and collaboration are key to fostering diversity and individual and group identity in youth and young adults. Based on a curriculum developed to foster students’ development of theoretical bridges between community concerns, needs and assets, social justice, and entrepreneurship, this paper discusses dance as a way of teaching activism and social entrepreneurship. Specific examples of the curriculum, including a hands-on outreach project with an underserved community, will be presented to highlight the meanings that these processes and approaches hold for both participants and teachers and to examine how dance pedagogy is reflected in this work. The curriculum embraces students’ experiences of immersing in a community through service learning, dancing, and creating together as a way to become connected and empowered to realize the value of equity, sustainability for human culture, creativity, diversity, and social entrepreneurship. Dance service-learning activities and the connections that are developed between the students and the community facilitate critical, creative, and entrepreneurial thinking in both groups. The project shows dance as a tool for service learning, communication and empowerment. This presentation will include a summary of the curriculum and excerpts of practices that were done by the students. It explores the following question: how do we build a successful curriculum that engages students to consider dance, creative processes and community engagement as mediums not only for empowerment and communication but as ways for social entrepreneurship to be in line with the current trend in dance to support critical inquiry in social justice?
Hannah Park is an Associate Professor and Director of Dance at Iona College, NY, where she also serves as the artistic director of the resident dance ensemble. Her current research interests encompass dance and creative processes—the application of Laban Movement Analysis, Bartinieff Fundamentals, and somatics in dance education, integrated arts education, and community engagement. She holds a Ph.D. in dance education from Temple University, an MFA in dance from Tisch NYU, and a BFA in dance performance and choreography from SUNY Purchase, and she is a somatic practitioner certified in Laban Movement Analysis and Body Mind Dancing.
Ellice Patterson
Abilities Dance Boston, United States of America
Making Dance Accessible through an Intersectional Disability Perspective
This lecture centers around my work at Abilities Dance Boston in making dance accessible through our performing company and community engagement while also discussing the theory behind intersectional disability equity through dance. We will discuss my background and not being able to access dance in the Boston area as a disabled performer. We will also discuss the intentional steps built within the company to ensure that we are always thinking of the various intersectional components to ensure we're thinking of how we can dismantle systems and work towards true liberation for all. I will show an example of our work and the various accessible components within to share how we ensure performances are accessible and that audiences understand these access points and bring them to their communities. It will lead to a conversation to ensure those in the room can build an understanding relevant to their communities. By doing so, I hope that we can continue to dialogue ways we can build equity internationally.
Ellice Patterson is the founder/ executive and artistic director of Abilities Dance, a Boston-based dance company that welcomes artists with and without disabilities. She is also the executive director of BalletRox, a Boston-based dance education program to provide access to high-quality dance education to youth within Boston Public Schools and in our after-school program in Jamaica Plain. Outside of self-produced Abilities Dance's shows, her choreography has appeared in the MFA, Links Hall in Chicago, Gibney Dance in NYC, The Series: Vol IV at the Ailey Citigroup Theatre in NYC, and more. She has given lectures and workshops at schools, universities, and organizations across the country, including Harvard Graduate School of Education, Fidelity Investments, Boston University, and more. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in Biological Sciences from Wellesley College and her Masters of Science in Management Studies from Boston University Questrom School of Business.
Jeff M. Poulin
Creative Generation, American University & Carnegie Mellon University, United States of America
Cultivating the Creative Generation: Dance Educators as Catalysis for Creative Social Transformation
As the world continues to grapple with injustice, young creatives are leading community-led approaches to heal collective trauma, developing future economies, reorienting economic development, and leading social change (Wolf & Poulin 2020). As dance educators, we have a unique perspective on the cultivation of that creativity and how it gets applied by young people. From several years of research, join Creative Generation's Jeff M. Poulin to share the findings of two large-scale studies on the impact young creatives can have on community development (Poulin 2020a) and social change (and how they did it!), specific examples of dance-based social change projects from around the world, and how dance educators can best support this work (Poulin 2020b). Attendees will walk about with new perspectives, inspirational case studies, and tangible next steps to reimagine their practice using dance-based justice-oriented, youth-centred approaches. Sources:
Jeff M. Poulin is the founder of Creative Generation, working to inspire, connect, and amplify the social change work of young creatives and those committed to cultivating their creativity. As a recognized leader in the education and cultural fields, he previously led nationwide arts education programs in Europe and the US, and currently directs large-scale initiatives for global NGOs. A seasoned educator, Jeff teaches at several universities and has spoken to audiences across the United States and in 25+ countries around the globe. Jeff is a tap dancer and mentors young dancers in the U.S. and the U.K.
Cristina Rebelo Leandro
Education School - Polytechnic Institute of Coimbra, Portugal
Dancing together: 'grandparents' and 'grandchildren' - An Intergenerational Community Project
This work intends to report an intergenerational educational experience, within the subject of Civic Education, developed in the 2017-2018 school year, in Coimbra, Portugal, with 5th-grade students (10/11 years old) and elderly people from the day program center. The project “The sea company wandering around school” took place both at school and the day program center, and the unifying theme was the book “A Menina do Mar”, from Sophia Andresen. It included the artistic and incorporated practices of creative writing, creative dance and music. The project included two sections; 1) From October to December the students rewrote the story “A Menina do Mar” in quatrains, in the Creative Writing Workshop at school; and, 2) From January to June, in two weekly lessons, the Creative Dance Workshops took place: one dance lesson at the day program center with the elderly population, shared with the Music teacher, and the other lesson for children and elderly people at school. These sessions developed in the ‘grandchildren’ and ‘grandparents’ the experience of doing movement from the creative dance (to dance), the creating (to invent) and the feeling (to note). The students searched for solutions to the challenges proposed in the story, exploring and handling the elements of dance: body, space, qualities of movement and relationship. These lessons developed both parts of the story through expressive/creative movements, built, from the quatrains set to music, and the dance compositions that became the final presentation to the community.
Cristina Rebelo Leandro holds a Degree in Dance and a Ph.D. in Human Kinetics on Dance specialty of Human Kinetics Faculty - University of Lisbon. She is a Professor in the Education School - Polytechnic Institute of Coimbra where she instructs Dance at the Undergraduate and Master's levels. She is the co-author, of a Creative Dance Manual - an interdisciplinary approach, an Integrated Researcher at the Institute of Ethnomusicology - Centre for studies in music and dance (INET-md/Polo FMH) and dance teacher of the Aesthetic and Artistic Education Program- Portugal (PEEA-Programa de Educação Estética e Artística). She is also a member of daCi (Dance and the Child International).
Kerrin Rowlands
University of South Australia, Australia
Perspectives on Indigenous dance education from an Australian university teacher education context
From the perspective of a teacher educator, this presentation considers individual positionality concerning matters of Indigenous marginalization alongside recent policy changes that have led to a new recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures as foundational for Australian dance (Australia Council for the Arts and Ausdance National 2008, p. 14). The presentation considers current research into the enactment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Histories and Cultures cross-curriculum priority in schools. The research explores teachers' views of their dance education histories alongside working with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Histories and Cultures curriculum. Given that the curriculum has been recently published and no practical strategies are provided for Dance in the policy documents, it is not yet known how the Australian dance curriculum is being implemented, nor how non-Indigenous teachers should appropriately use the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cross-curriculum priority and Focus Areas as priorities in their teaching practices. The deficit in teacher confidence and knowledge to include dance in classrooms and embed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Histories and Cultures as part of the new Australian Curriculum raises significant concerns about how teachers may realize a culturally responsive dance pedagogy in schools. Following increasing global awareness of colonial impacts and the significance of losing Indigenous knowledge, the presentation poses questions about Indigenous foundations for dance learning for all young Australians.
Kerrin Rowlands is a lecturer in Arts Education at the University of South Australia. She has taught extensively in schools, universities and arts education organizations. She works with government and education departments as a professional learning program coordinator in arts education and as a Teaching Artist in dance and Creative Body-based Learning (CBL). She is the program development manager for the Developing Effective Arts Learning (DEAL) program for Carclew (DfE). Kerrin’s research focuses on the enactment of dance in the school curriculum and Creative and Body-based Learning pedagogies. Her current Ph.D. research investigates how teachers prioritize Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander content in the new Australian dance curriculum.
Urša Rupnik & Vesna Geršak
University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
How creative movement approach enriched distance learning for fourth graders
The article presents the project that enriched the school life of fourth-graders of an elementary school during the closure of public life. The project involved a dance artist who met twice a week (19 distance learning hours) with the students and their teacher through the Zoom platform. The project was primarily process-oriented, with the primary goal of creating an alternative learning environment that reinforced understanding of the subject matter and facilitated social interaction with classmates, active and creative movement experiences, mindfulness, and movement during the lockdown. Using a triangulation of qualitative and quantitative analysis, we present the views of students, parents, a teacher, and an artist on the integration of teaching and learning through the artistic experience of creative movement and dance at a distance. The results of the study show that creative movement workshops were important for children in the field of movement itself, as they otherwise spend most of their time nailed in front of screens. They were allowed to express themselves through movement, have fun and realize their dance potential. All participants state that this kind of social interaction contributed greatly to the otherwise reduced social contact between the children; movement and dance activities also contributed to a better understanding of some learning contents, especially in the field of science. The project was carried out in the framework of the ESF-funded project Developing Communication Skills through Cultural and Artistic Education.
Urša Rupnik (Slovenia) is a freelance dance artist, dancer, choreographer and dance pedagogue. She cooperates with the University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Education; Alma Mater Europaea, Dance Academy Ljubljana; Conservatory of Music and Ballet Ljubljana, Ballet Collage. Her work includes artistic creation, staging and performing as well as teaching and mentoring with a focus on participatory dance pedagogy. She is a Ph.D. student at the University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Education, working on the integration of contemporary dance principles into higher education.
Nina Meško belongs to the generation of dancers and choreographers that began its artistic creation in the 1990s when Slovenia withdrew from the federative Yugoslavian story and was for two decades one of the best-articulated artists in the Slovenian contemporary dance production. She performed at numerous events in Slovenia and abroad and received two major international residential grants – ArtsLink (NY) and Tanzquarter (A). For the last fourteen years, she has been working as the head of the dance department at the Republic of Slovenia Public Fund for Cultural Activities (JSKD), where she organizes events about contemporary dance, dance pedagogy, and drafts incentives for creation and facilitates conditions for staging performances. This is how she managed to create the festivals and educational events, whose main goal is to foster dance creativity of children and youth and provide for professional qualifications of their mentors all over Slovenia’s regions.
Muhammad Fazli Taib Saearani
Sultan Idris Education University, Malaysia
Creative Movement Project Activities: Exploration of Play with Themed Movement Approach with Indigenous Children
This creative movement activity project is part of the Teaching and Creative Movement Class that I have taught for the Bachelor of Performing Arts (Dance) students. This project involves a total of 30 children from Kampung Chinngung, Perak, Malaysia who willingly participated in this project to fill their leisure time. Before the project was carried out, the students and I conducted observations to find out the appropriate activities that can be carried out based on their physical and emotional abilities. Founded on these observations, a form of structured activity using a thematic approach as a management tool that provides an opportunity for indigenous children to connect with the creative activities of dance students was created. This article discusses how creative movement activities carried out with aboriginal children influences their condition along with their ability to act. Exploration of play using play methods and thematic approaches adopted during the project was analyzed. This project is an effort to increase the understanding and awareness of indigenous children towards understanding the themes of the planned activities. Provision of space sharing, idea, expression and movement exploration using creative movements provide dance students with knowledge that can be shared amongst the community of indigenous children.
Muhammad Fazli Taib Saearani graduated summa cum laude from Universitas Gadjah Mada with a Doctorate in Performing Art and Visual Art Studies in the field of dance education and classical court dance heritage of Yogyakarta. He received his Master's degree (Drama & Theater) in creative movement education at Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang in 2014, Bachelor's Degree in Creative Arts with dance concentration at University Malaysia Sabah in 2007 and Diploma in Performing Arts (Acting) in 2004 at Universiti Teknologi Mara. His research focuses on dance education, dance heritage through non-formal education, creative movement education and sociology of dance. Currently, he is the Deputy Dean of Academic and Internationalization at the Faculty of Music and Performing Arts in Sultan Idris Education University, Malaysia.
Mary Savva
Feelance Artist, United Kingdom
The Traces of my Ballet Body
My presented paper will be a communication of my chapter in (Re:) claiming Ballet edited by Adesola Akinleye. It is an unpicking of a journey from trained professional dancer to somatic movement practitioner and teacher. I will contextualize my work by looking towards a future of opening up the genre. I will triangulate with my journal writing, witnessing, musing, dancing and my involvement with The Walk of Life Training with Helen Poynor. I will be laying out themes I have found that now inform a new way of approaching my dancing moving body and facilitating others; mostly children with my dance school. I would like to consider that when your dance experience has been geared towards the body as a product (sometimes for others to gaze at and consume) that embracing opposites is very difficult. Many would argue that to dance fixed forms are equally embodied and do have a kind of deeper spirituality, but I argue and question this: What else is driving the dance? Is it harmful? Does it resemble more of a religion than a holistic awakening? Is it allowing “all” bodies to be understood? Maybe we could be trapped in our vigorously learned cerebral ideas on what we think the experience is, something that is hard to let go of? I will unravel what happens when you have a moment of stillness and release. Knowing is a long process of becoming.
Mary Savva, MA, began her early professional career as a performer, working in film, tv and west end theatre. She now primarily teaches and works within the community, making dance with children, adolescents and adults in varied social sites and environments, crossing genres and cross-pollinating with other creative resources such as voice, freewriting, storytelling and drawing. Key to Mary's work as a community dance artist, educator and practitioner is the idea that dance links the physical and emotional self with others, and that self-expression through movement is a key form of communication. Mary loves to build bonds of trust in the workshops she facilitates and believes in the support each of us can offer one another is a vibrant and fruitful resource for building confidence, self-esteem and friendship. Mary continues to practice from a somatic approach and recently contributed to a new book 'Reappraising What Ballet Can Be For a Dancer and Life". www.marysavva.org
Arshiya Sethi
India
Challenging Content: Making “stairways to happiness” through dance for the child
When India signed the UNCRC three decades ago, it conceded statutorily to the rights of all children including their cultural rights. This paper throws light on the quality of the cultural rights conceded to, by challenging the prevalent content in certain performance forms, particularly dance. This is specifically foregrounded in two contexts- content that negates the idea of consent, which is part of the repertoire and pedagogy in the classical Indian dance form of Kathak, and the adult themes that enter the children’s reality dance show space, in the guise of showcasing talent. Finding and restricting content to childhood imagery and age appropriateness is necessary for building the ideal of individual sovereignty, social agency and good citizenship, through the ontological learnings implicit in dance training, and contributing to the larger design of childhood learning. This is a challenging prospect, but not daunting, as several stand-alone, restricted, but celebrated exceptions in Indian dance, both, in India and globally, have shown us. This paper interrogates persisting inappropriate practices, identifies some child-friendly repertoire building examples, and argues that true commitment to the ideal of age-appropriate artistic content for the child, is best possible through a spectrum philosophy of “whole child development”, as argued by Dr. Harbans Nakra, an engineer by profession and a dance lover for over five decades. My paper concludes by referring to the “Stairways to happiness” initiative undertaken by the Montreal-based Indian dance school, Kala Bharati, with which Dr, Nakra was closely associated.
Twice a Fulbright Fellow, Dr. Arshiya Sethi, established and manages the Kri Foundation, which braids Arts, Activism and Knowledge creation. Formerly dance critic for India’s leading English daily Times of India, and presenter for four decades of a featured Music and Dance programme on National TV, Doordarshan, she rose to advise Doordarshan. Author of popular and scholarly writings, co-editor and contributor to “Dance Under the Shadow of the Nation” ( 2019), a DSA publication, she is launching an international academic Journal on South Asian Dance and its Intersections. New areas of work include Indian dance globally, and intersecting with law.
Charlotte Svendler Nielsen
University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Creating connections and overcoming obstacles through embodied artistic practice – an integrated and intercultural arts education project in a South African primary school
What is the value of an integrated and intercultural arts educational approach combining dance and visual arts in different ways to a school community in South Africa, especially its children, and what value might such cross border endeavours have to the teachers and the artist/educator/researchers leading it as well as to their professional fields of practice and research? Colliding in the pandemic year 2020 four years of intercultural and arts-integrated exchange around educational work in a South African primary school class was nearing its end. The last year of the project met obstacles that it was possible to overcome through connections that had already been created, but ‘connections and obstacles’ also became the theme for the last workshop before the children were going to leave the school to go on to high school as this workshop became a possibility after a long and hard lockdown period. Through various approaches involving visual and embodied dialogues and expressive formats during this workshop, the children became aware of both their own and others’ lockdown experiences. This paper will discuss the value of the project based on participants’ experiences and examples of the children’s work related to our dialogues as artists/educators/researchers around the project as they took place during 2020-21. Perspectives of both children and adults contribute to creating insights into the experiences of value as well as to the chosen theoretical underpinnings, and performative methodological and pedagogic choices of the project.
Charlotte Svendler Nielsen, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor and Head of Studies at the Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports, research cluster “Embodiment, Learning and Social Change” University of Copenhagen, Denmark. She is an Executive Board member of Dance and the Child International and Chair of the European Network of Observatories in the Field of Arts and Cultural Education linked to UNESCO. Apart from writing numerous articles and book chapters, she is co-editor of (2015) Dance Education around the World, (2017) Dance, Access and Inclusion, and (2020) Dancing across Borders, all forming part of the book series Perspectives on Dance, Young People and Change published by Routledge U.K.
Gerard M. Samuel, Ph.D., is Associate Professor: University of Cape Town School of Dance, Convener: Post Graduate studies in Dance, Editor: South African Dance Journal, and Chair of Confluences dance conference. During the Apartheid era, he performed with the NAPAC Ballet Company and The Playhouse Dance Company in Durban. His research centres on contemporary dance and questions the ontologies of marginalization and alterity. His notable choreographies include Prabhati and The Man I Love. Gerard has produced Place of Grace, a dance film. He is an advocate of disability arts in South Africa and Denmark.
JuanAnn Tai
Tainan University of Technology, Taiwan
Inter-Asia Dance Culture Experience for Children in Taiwan
This paper provides a reflective perspective on the practice of children’s dance education in Taiwan for intercultural understanding Initially, the inspiration came from my observation at a private dance school that offers lessons for children to learn Taiwanese cultural dance. As a dance educator, I always search for new approaches beyond verbal expressions that accentuate bodily experience for cultural understanding, so by introducing master practitioners of Balinese dance and music to the children of a local dance school, I sought to examine the force of dance as an effective way of understanding culture, identity, and diversity. Children from different communities who were involved in this workshop included the school owner’s daughters, the Balinese dance instructor’s daughters, and children from the nearby neighbourhood. For data collection and analysis, I apply the method of semi-structured interviews and participant observation. Moreover, conversations with the parents who manifest their appreciation of such cultural exchange also provided insights for this research. The results demonstrate that dance has significant potential to foster children’s respect for cultural differences. In addition, by sharing music, props, and costumes, mutual understanding was built between the children. Overall, this experience brings to light that to bridge cultural gaps in the community, dance is the answer..
JuanAnn TAI (Ann Hayward) (Ph.D.) is a professor in the Department of Dance at the Tainan University of Technology in Taiwan. She is currently the national representative of daCi Taiwan, on the board of directors for Taiwan Dance Research Society, and an international editorial member of The Korean Society for Dance Studies and Research in Dance and Physical Education. Her research interests include dance education, dance history, dance criticism and cross-cultural dance studies.
Heather Taschuk
Creative Kinetics Dance, Canada
The Garuda®️ Method
The Garuda®️ Method, developed by James deSilva, is a system of exercise that unites the mind and body by combining the spirituality, pranayama and asana practice of yoga, the core strength and focus of pilates, and the balletic grace of dance. The Garuda®️ Method is the answer to many people’s quest for a stronger, more flexible, toned body. In this session you’ll learn to control your body through precise stretches and actions, emphasizing smooth, seamless movements without any stress on joints. It is accessible to all body types and abilities and can be tailored to suit the participants. Whether you’re recovering from a physical injury, looking for an alternative to traditional gym workouts or an accomplished athlete, Garuda will challenge you and reward you. The exercises create space in the body, opening the joints and releasing tension so that you will be able to move more freely. Heather Taschuk (BFA, B.Ed After Degree) will lead this introductory session to the Garuda®️ Method, touching on elements of the Garuda Matwork, Seated & Standing Garuda Yoga practice, and Dhara (chair work). Please wear comfortable clothing and have a water bottle nearby. You will need a straight-back chair, or a stool, that you can sit on while having your feet flat on the ground. Please make sure you have at least 6 feet square of space around you so that you have enough space to move safely. Recommended for ages 10 and up.
Heather Taschuk (BFA, B.Ed) is knowledgeable in the areas of dance, physical literacy, bodywork, and functional anatomy. She is a high school Arts teacher in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, the owner of Creative Kinetics Dance (www.creativekineticsdance.com), a founding member of PLAY GREAT Edmonton, and is a certified instructor for the Garuda®️ Method. Heather puts her knowledge of Creative Dance and the Garuda®️ Method to work in the community, celebrating the joy of moving in daycares, local studios, and special events. As a child, she danced in the Opening Ceremonies of the first daCi Conference in 1978.
Tsirogianni Theodora Elpiniki
European University of Cyprus, Greece
Inclusive Dance in Inclusive Education
This poster reports findings from a literature review study that aimed to describe inclusive dance in an inclusive school environment. The word inclusion suggests a place where everybody belongs and feels accepted, where each individual and their uniqueness is embraced. Unfortunately, sometimes people with disabilities often do feel excluded and isolated in different environments. In an inclusive environment, all people are part of a learning community and receive a quality education with their peers. In dance, people of all ability levels are respected for their individuality. In an inclusive dance environment, the words we use must reflect an inner attitude of acceptance and openness toward all students and a belief in their fundamental equality and value. As dance teachers, we have the opportunity to engage people of all dance abilities. Including people with disabilities requires awareness and flexibility. The success of an inclusive dance environment relies on the pedagogical practices of teachers. Based on the literature review inclusive dance provides opportunities for participants with and without disabilities to share a dance space. Our goal is for all people to experience their bodies and to create an atmosphere of belonging. The discussion focuses on issues emerging from the analysis, such as the potential of this art to enrich the school curriculum and promote inclusive education, by exploring how inclusive dance can be combined with inclusive education and how teachers can use dance to include kids with disabilities in the group activities, without isolating them and separate them from the whole group.
Theodora Elpiniki Tsirogianni is a Ph.D. candidate at the European University of Cyprus in Inclusive Education and Inclusive Dance. She has been living in Luxembourg since 2019, working as a physical educator and inclusive dance teacher in private institutions and currently as a support assistant at the European School, Luxembourg. Her first university diploma in Physical Education and Sports Science was obtained at Aristotle University in Greece, followed by a Master of Science degree in Special Physical Education from the same university. Her academic studies have also been complemented by a Master's training in dance and disability by the “DanceAbility International Method” organization in Oregon (United States) and a diploma in dance education from “The Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing” in London (United Kingdom). Furthermore, in 2015 she founded, in Greece a "wheelchair dance group" for children with mental and physical disabilities with the name: 'AthirmaEnTroxois'.
Flavia Valle
Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Brazil
Dance and Arts in schools’ curriculum in Brazil
The professional career of teaching at schools is an undervalued profession in Brazil. Part of this is due to low remuneration, but also violence, low structure, stress, and others. Since 2007, the government created programs to promote 18-months experience to undergraduate students in public schools, as part of a partnership between the Government and universities to link theoretical e practical knowledge. These programs are called the Institutional Teaching Initiation Scholarship Program (PIBID) and Pedagogical Residency Program (RP). This exposition relates two experiences of the RP in the 2018-2019 and 2020-2021 editions. The 2018 edition was face-to-face and involved Dance undergraduate students. The 2020 edition was done in the context of emergency remote teaching, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and dealt with undergraduate students of Visual Art, Dance, Theater, and Music. Therefore, it focuses on two experiences, one of each edition, a dance performance and an online dance class where daily gestures were explored in both cases. Some questions were raised by the participants: how can we promote autonomy through dance? What strategies the four artistic languages (visual arts, dance, theatre and music) can exchange since there are located in the same space on the curriculum? Reflections about the curriculum and the Arts in the curriculum are important to prepare students to work in this space and also to point out positive and negative aspects, as well as possible ways of dealing with this kind of organization.
Flavia Pilla do Valle is currently a professor with a Dance Degree and a Master's in Performing Arts at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) in Porto Alegre/Brazil. She holds a Doctorate in Education from UFRGS, Master in Dance from NYU and Certified Movement Analyst from LIMS. Her specialty is in the intersection between dance education and dance creation.
Marelize van Heerden
Nelson Mandela University, South Africa
Investigating student experiences of a ‘dance-at-home’ course in South Africa, during lockdown
In 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic struck South Africa and the dance education course for pre-service student teachers had to be re-imagined for distance learning. Globally, many dance educators moved to synchronous learning platforms, but in South Africa, students struggled with internet access, data, devices and the lack of appropriate physical space to work synchronously. Hence, I designed an asynchronous teaching method that facilitated dance experiences in my vastly diverse multicultural classroom, at home. Students were provided with instructions for dance-making activities that they could do either by themselves or with their family members. For this course, they had to provide evidence of participation in these activities documented with video recordings, photos or writing a short reflection. Pedagogically, this new method of teaching dance education is unique, since students participated in the dance asynchronously and isolation, rather than the usual synchronous participation in community with others. This enabled students to have autonomy over their own dance experiences to choose not only how they wanted to create each dance, but also, which dance vocabulary they wanted to explore. This course encouraged participants to involve their family members in the dance, which unlike other dance education methods offered opportunities to share the actual dance experiences with family members, bringing the dance into the home environment. This paper investigates the experiences of students as they engaged with this compulsory dance education course during a time of lockdown and isolation.
Dr. Marelize van Heerden lectures on Dance Education, Music Education and Philosophy of Education at the Faculty of Education, Nelson Mandela University, South Africa. She holds a Master’s Degree in Music and a Doctorate in Education. Her doctorate regarded the potential of dance education to promote social cohesion in South Africa. During her doctoral studies, she was awarded a European Union scholarship to study Cultural Sociology at Masaryk University, Czech Republic. Further research interests include nation-building, peace education, ideas of self concerning the Other, ethnocultural identity, African philosophy and training teachers for the culturally diverse classroom.
Li Zihao (Michael)
Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, Hong Kong, SAR China
Developing empathy and creativity through virtual dance community
This study investigates how tertiary dance teachers and students coped with the sudden shift in the learning model caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. 120+ dance teachers and students participated in this study, offering their perspectives regarding virtual dance classes (VDC). The study finds that VDC fostered a sense of empathy among students and teachers during the pandemic. VDC developed a much closer community where participants could share thoughts, emotions, and stories through embodied messages and written texts. Dance teachers and students are appreciative because there was a place for them to exchange ideas and build knowledge while sharing their struggles caused by the pandemic. The study unveils that students were capable of adapting to virtual learning much faster than teachers, even though the virtual platform was not ideal. Restrictions caused by the pandemic boosted creativity in choreography and performance. This study shares insight on tools, technologies, and recommendations from dance students.
Professor Katrine Wong writes on English Renaissance Drama and Macao Studies. Recent publications include Routledge books (monograph and edited volume), book chapters with OUP, book chapters with Brill and articles in top-tiered journals. T&L in Higher Education is her other forte: just these two years she has given no fewer than 20 invited talks and workshops at international HE conferences and universities in Greater China. Through cross-disciplinary collaboration, Wong created Macao’s first MOOC, Creativity. Wong is also a classically-trained musician, holding professional titles of FTCL (Piano) and LTCL (Voice) from Trinity College London. She is conductor of Coro Perosi Macao..
Zihao Li (Michael) Dr. Li promotes a pedagogy that combines arts, education, and technology. Originated in the field of performing arts (Dance), he extends his education philosophy to general education as well as MOOC, SPOC, and integrated pedagogies. Through cross-disciplinary collaboration, Li created Macao’s first MOOC, Creativity. His achievement has been recognized as he is the recipient of multiple international teaching awards. At present, he serves as the Assistant Deputy Director co-overseeing the Centre for Education and Research, which comprises General/Liberal Arts Education, Practice/Performance as Research, and Education Information & Technology at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts.
Luisa del Rocio Alegre
Agrupamento de Escolas de Carcavelos - Cascais, Portugal
The Cascais Dance Project associated with a transformative pedagogy
This project aimed to promote the artistic practice of integrated dance associated with a transformative humanistic pedagogy and committed to students from disadvantaged schools named Agrupamento de Escolas de Alcabideche - Cascais between 2016-2018. We follow an integrative methodology based on the project. The organizing theme was a short story that was part of the National Reading Plan in Portugal. Over 100 children and youth participated on stage together with relevant results.
Luisa Alegre completed a PhD in Human Motricity - Dance at the University of Lisbon - FMH. She has been working on school projects since 1994 as a teacher of physical education, expressive rhythmic activities and dance. She is currently a teacher at Agrupamento de Escolas de Carcavelos - Cascais in Portugal. She was responsible for the National Dance portfolio in 2018-2019. She supports other teachers in the dissemination of dance at school and she believes in the potential of Dance inserted in a transformative and human pedagogy as a way of building people's citizenship.
Sophia McKain & Nicholeen DeGrasse-Johnson
Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts, Jamaica
Requa: Make Dance Your Own
Barbara Requa has contributed significantly to the development of dance in Jamaica for more than sixty years. Her work with children and young people has made significant impact on dance education in Jamaica and the Caribbean. It all began in the garage of Requa’s home in the 1960’s. She envisioned a young generation of dancers whose physical, mental and spiritual processes could be developed under the guidance of expert facilitators within a caring and stimulating environment. In the 1970’s, the new home for the young dancers became the grounds of the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts where the Contemporary Dance Centre (CDC), the name of her first school, was renamed the Junior Department of the School of Dance (JDSD). Today, her legacy continues at the School and the emergence of similar junior dance programmes throughout Jamaica. Her students, many of whom are now teachers of dance are humbled, but proud to be able to sustain environments, or rather havens, created over several decades that have enabled young minds to develop creatively in and through dance.
This paper presentation draws on multiple perspectives and sources (biographical, critical, historical, and socio-cultural) to construct the life of this Jamaican dance education stalwart, Barbara Requa. Dance education in Jamaica is indebted to her vision. She built a space that elevated the child’s voice and empowered students to “make dance your own.” As a founding member of daCi and a pioneer of dance education, this paper uncovers her contributions to building dance communities in Jamaica.
Sophia McKain holds a Masters of Arts in Dance Education degree from the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. She is also a graduate of the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts where she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Performance and Choreography along with a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from the University of the West Indies, Mona. Sophia is a firm believer that dance is more than the learning of steps and based on its myriad of benefits, every child should be allowed the experience of dance. She is currently the Chair of the Education Board of Studies and the Head of Department of Dance Education at the Edna Manley College of the Visual & Performing Arts.
Nicholeen DeGrasse-Johnson has been involved in dance education for over three decades. She holds a PhD in Dance from Temple University, USA. She has, since 2012, served as Principal of the EMCVPA and was previously the Director of the School of Dance, at the institution. Under her leadership, the Junior Department at the EMCVPA’s School of Dance has participated in eight Dance and the Child International (daCi) Conferences chairing the eleventh Conference in Jamaica, August 2009. Dr. D-J, as she is affectionately called, believes in the transformative power of dance and by extension the arts in education. She has a love and passion for dance and education, and is an advocate for learning in, about, and through the arts in Jamaica and the Caribbean.
Alba Vieira
Federal University of Vicosa, Brazil
Dancing through the pandemic in Brazil
The pandemic situation resulting from the COVID19 virus, its restrictions and confinement, have led to prolonged and forced physical distancing for many people in the world, including Brazil. In my country the health measures highlighted the social inequality, particularly in relation to those people who do not have access to decent housing, drinking water, minimum income and so on. For dancers who have had the access to the world wide, computers and/or mobile devices like tablets and smartphones along with communication software such as Skype, Google meet and/or Zoom, the virtual world has been an alternative to continue working: teaching, taking classes, creating and watching dance pieces, showing their dances. All the changes happened quite quickly, and the virtual world has been a possible alternative for those privileged professional dancers like me. Acknowledging this context, this presentation focuses on the analysis of a project I developed for several months in 2020 and 2021: the coproduction of screendance works between national and international artists during the pandemia. This initiative has emerged within the context of physical separation over the last one and a half year in Brazil. My aim is to shed light on the variety of collaborative working methods in contemporary screendance production in times of political, financial and health crisis. I reflect on the fruitful benefits of these kinds of experiences and networks to nurture social relationships, even in a virtual world, which reveals ways for economically privileged dancers to feel they still are part of a global community.
Alba Vieira holds a Ph.D. in Dance (Temple University, USA). She has been an associate professor and researcher on Dance at Federal University of Vicosa. Her academic work (book chapters and papers on dance) has been published in Brazil and abroad; she also organized two books, “Education in Arts” (2010), and "Art and Violence" (2017). She has been the national representative for DaCi in Brazil since 2012, and a dancer and the founding artistic director of MOSAICO, a contemporary dance company. Her performance works have been toured and presented in many states in Brazil and diverse countries in the world.
Flavia Pilla do Valle
Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
Dance and Arts in schools’ curriculum in Brazil
The professional career of teaching at schools is an undervalued profession in Brazil. Part of this is due to low remuneration, but also to violence, low structure, stress, and others. Since 2007, the government created programs to promote 18-months experience to undergraduate students in public schools, as part of a partnership of the Government and universities to link theoretical e practical knowledge. These programs are called Institutional Teaching Initiation Scholarship Program (PIBID) and Pedagogical Residency Program (RP). This exposition relates two experiences of the RP in the 2018-2019 and 2020-2021 editions. The 2018 edition was face-to-face and involved Dance undergraduate students. The 2020 edition was done in the context of emergency remote teaching, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and dealt with undergraduate students of Visual Art, Dance, Theater, and Music. Therefore, it focuses on two experiences, one of each edition, a dance performance and an online dance class where daily gestures were explored in both cases. Some questions were raised by the participants: how can we promote autonomy through dance? What strategies the four artistic languages (visual arts, dance, theater and music) can exchange since there are located in the same space on the curriculum? Reflections about the curriculum and the Arts in the curriculum are important to prepare students to work in this space and also to point out positive and negative aspects, as well as possible ways of dealing with this kind of organization.
Flavia Pilla do Valle is currently a professor at a Dance Degree and a Master in Performing Arts at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) in Porto Alegre/Brazil. She holds a Doctorate in Education from UFRGS, Master in Dance from NYU and Certified Movement Analyst from LIMS. Her specialty is in the intersection between dance education and dance creation.
Alba Vieira, Shirley Djukurnã Krenak, Francisco Hyjnõ & Raquel de Magalhães Borges
Federal University of Vicosa, Brazil
Federal University of Juiz de Fora, Brazil
Indigenous Leader of the Krahô
Federal University of Juiz de Fora, Brazil
Art, Children's And Young Adults´ Bodies And Invisibilities: Connections And Rituals
The encounter with art reveals different ways of knowing, cosmovisions, living and relating to the world, cosmos, nature and beings, living or not, human or not. Affective sensory experiences are imponderable to arouse feelings of belonging and alterity, especially in bodies belonging to native cultures and/or living in other contexts of social invisibility. This panel intends to present and debate practices of artistic ritualistic experiences from/with Brazilian indigenous children and young adults, also with those ones who are visually impaired and/or who live in peripheral urban regions in Brazil. This is our way to embody activist art, oriented by anti-colonialism and the cultivation of relationships based on harmony, respect and care with the world and among ourselves. In this space-time of the “between” we are always becoming and we inhabit a world full of collective dreams and imaginations. On going transformations are necessary to build a world we want to live in, an accountable community. In the case of the indigenous people, there is a very strong relationship with nature, fruits, animals, the elderly. Their affective intensification takes place from multiple connections provided by the experience of art and the elaboration of the sensitive in an unconventional way. Since the European invasion of their lands, indigenous people have embodied resistance and resilience, and the pandemic situation has been a learning tool to provoke us: What can we learn from our native people? What histories about this land and about its (invisible) children and young adults have yet not been told? How can we as dancers and performers illuminate that which has been hidden, erased, buried in plain sight? How can we retell our lost stories memories such that they animate us to engage into restorative and regenerative action towards art as w ay of living? To explore these questions, at this daCi Conference panel Hyjnõ Krahô (indigenous leader) shares cosmovision values and a “differentiated school” he believes in; Shirley Djukurnã Krenak (indigenous activist) tells us about the sounds that heal; Raquel Borges (dance performer, professor and researcher) talks about her research on “dancing in the dark” with impaired vision children; Alba Vieira (dance artist, professor and researcher) discusses the “bodily storms” from the research she conducted for six years with children and young people whose own histories are full of colonialism, capitalism, and racism lived experiences. These proposals come closer because they are based on knowledge and wisdom that strengthen the collectivity and opens up to admirable revelations to deepening the imagination and artistic enjoyment in undoing and remaking the/our world for the better. We suggest dance, music singing and listening, artistic performance and other rituals might be journeys of communal development experiences guided for sustainability principles. Children, teenagers and young adults seem to be open to surprising insights and connections. How do you relate to this idea?
Alba Vieira holds a Ph.D. in Dance (Temple University, USA, 2007), and she has been an associate professor and researcher on Dance at Federal University of Vicosa since 1997. Her academic work (book chapters and papers on dance) has been published in Brazil and abroad, and she also organized two books, “Education in Arts” (2010), and "Art and Violence" (2017). She is the national representative for DaCi in Brazil since 2012, and a dancer and the founding artistic director of MOSAICO, a contemporary dance company. She works directly with indigenous comunnities since 2017.
Shirley Djukurnã Krenak is an activist leader, writer and a graduate in Social Communication. She has made it her life’s work to fight for the rights of the indigenous peoples of Brazil, and preserve their heritage and sacred rivers. Her prerogative is to safeguard the language, culture and traditions of her indigenous family – the Krenak. She also is the pedagogical coordinator for the social extension courses on History of the Indigenous People from Brazil at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora. As the coordinator of the Institute under her name, she establishes partnerships with other associations such as the Agroecology Nucleus Nagô.
Francisco Hyjnõ is an indigenous leader of the Krahô ethnic group. He has learned from childhood, with his father, an important indigenous leader, the need to take care of the territory. As a young man, he worked on farms in the region and learned a little about the way of life of non-indigenous people. Then he began to get directly involved in strong territorial protection. Currently, Hyjnõ is the main reference among the Krahô when it comes to inspection and territorial control, personifying the figure of the warrior guardian of their culture and territory.
Raquel de Magalhães Borges holds a Ph.D in Leisure Studies (UFMG, Brazil, 2019), and she has been a professor and researcher at Federal University of Juiz de Fora since 2014. Her academic works on dance, leisure, quality life. She is a member of the Transdisciplinary Research Group in Dance and of the Body and Society Physical Education Study Group.
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