High School Dance

Student Learnings: What students should know and be able to do 

Students identify and demonstrate dance movement elements and skills

• Perform technical dance skills, patterns, whole dances with artistic expression, demonstrating clarity, musicality, self-awareness and stylistic nuance.
• Refine their own physical dance abilities through self-evaluation and correction.
• Describe and demonstrate principles of skeletal alignment, body part articulation, strength, flexibility, agility and coordination in locomotor and non-locomotor and axial movements.
• Demonstrate understanding and control of movement qualities in the performance of patterns and variations.
• Know and apply the relevant terminology of dance technique.
• Identify and demonstrate movements, steps and patterns from a variety of dance styles and traditions.

Students understand and apply choreographic principles, processes and structures

• Create brief dance studies to demonstrate understanding of various structures or forms (e.g., theme and variation, cannon, ABA).
• Identify, discuss and apply a variety of devices (such as repetition, variation, abstraction) to extend movement ideas into dance phrases and themes.
• Work in various compositional modes (including having a designated choreographer and cooperative group collaboration) to create solos, duets and group dances that demonstrate understanding of the choreographic process.
• Demonstrate understanding of the importance of communication skills in the dance-making process (e.g., listening to ideas; giving clear verbal and non-verbal instructions; giving, accepting and applying feedback; and respecting the contributions of others).
• Discuss and demonstrate how improvisation may be a form of choreography or a tool to generate movement.
• Create movement studies and dance that challenge natural, personal preference.

Students understand and participate in dance as a way to perceive, create and communicate meaning

• Create dance studies that express a variety of ideas, images, feelings and themes.
• Analyze the gestures and movement design in a dance and explain the meanings represented or conveyed by these elements.
• Analyze existing dances that express various ideas, images, feelings or themes, understanding that experience, background and point of view will affect interpretation.
• Discuss ways in which dance is a non-verbal form of expression which abstract ideas in dance.
• Create dances, demonstration or performances which consider specific audience context or personal experience.

Students apply and demonstrate critical thinking skills in dance

• Analyze a variety of dances and discuss the relative importance of the elements of dance in each.
• Establish a set of criteria for evaluating dances and apply these to their own work and to that of others.
• Describe how a person's perception of dance can be sharpened through the practice of describing dance in written and spoken communication.

Students demonstrate and understand dance in various cultures and historical periods, including their own

• Examine and discuss the cultural messages contained in the dance and movement patterns of different cultures, including their own.
• Perform movement from different cultures with competence and confidence.
• Describe similarities and differences between two contemporary theatrical forms of dance.
• Perform or discuss the traditions and technique of a classical dance form.

Students make connections between dance and other disciplines

• Recognize dance as a means of maintaining personal fitness and wellness throughout life.
• Understanding the relationship between the structure/function of the body and specific dance movements.
• Apply the concepts of geometry to describe dance design.
• Apply the concept of physics in the description and performance of movement qualities.
• Use a structure from a non-dance field of study to provide the structure for creating an original dance.