Recommendations arising from the Safe Dance IV research project
In professional dance, as with all physical and athletic endeavours, there will always be a realistic expectation of some musculoskeletal complaints. The information gathered through the Safe Dance research studies develops a better understanding of the changing profile of professional dancers in Australia and their experience of injury. The findings can be used to assist in the tailoring and evaluation of evidence based injury prevention initiatives with the long-term goal of safely sustaining dancers in their professional dance careers for as long as they choose.
Online delivery of dance classes and tutorials
Due to COVID-19 and changed circumstances in studios, schools and community, many dance providers have chosen to move their classes online. Here is a guide to keeping people connected, moving and staying positive in challenging times. However, teaching online presents a new set of practical, legal and pedagogical considerations. This resource looks at these three areas and provides some ideas and suggestions. It has been prepared by Dr Katrina Rank, Director of Education and Life Long Learning at Ausdance Victoria.
Dancing the Design
This article is an account of Sela Kiek-Callan’s postgraduate research journey in “Dancing Design”, an exploration of affinities between architecture and dancing bodies which become manifest in embodied responses of weight, rhythm and intensity when dancers pay attention to the built environment in which they are encased.
Dance teaching and learning in context: activating the head, heart and hands
Avril Huddy and Kym Stevens (both lecturers in dance at Queensland University of Technoology) cover the latest pedagogical concepts in the training of dance teachers across a broad spectrum at a university level.
A historical overview of dance in the New Zealand curriculum
A historical overview of the development of the New Zealand dance curriculum from the early twentieth century to the present day reveals shifting meanings and emphases from military drills to gymnastics, eurhythmics, creative movement, European folk dance and cultural Maori dance. In the last decade however, dance in the New Zealand school curriculum has arguably gone through its most influential change as it shifted from the physical education curriculum to the arts curriculum.
This curriculum shift refined and focussed the academic study of dance in New Zealand primary, secondary and tertiary education contexts. This article focuses upon curriculum and the key persons shaping curriculum development and its delivery in New Zealand from the early 1900s to the present day.
A National Dance Forum that embodies our diversity, its history, its present and its future
Andrew Morrish, 2015 National Dance Forum facilitator, shares his vision for this forum: an NDF that embodies our diversity, its history, its present and its future, and to experience the forum as a living community.
Inside a pre-professional year at Sydney Dance Company
23 students participated in Sydney Dance Company's 2014 Pre-Professional training program. Two of them talk about their experience.
Dance for Parkinson’s in Australia
For people with Parkinson's disease, high quality dance classes led by trained professional teaching artists are becoming internationally acknowledged and valued as both a creative activity and an evidence-based therapeutic intervention. From my own dancer’s perspective, these classes are a beautiful and satisfying way to authentically share my own experience and passion for the art form in way that also connects to community.
Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival—Phoebe Barnes talks about her experience
Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, which takes place every summer in Massachusetts USA, is lauded worldwide as a "hub and mecca of dancing"..."one of America's most precious cultural assets"....and "the dance center of the nation." Phoebe Barnes, Australian dancer & teacher, talks about her exciting experience at the 2014 Festival.
The latest Australian dance thinking on show at the 2014 World Dance Alliance Global Summit
More than 25 Australian’s will travel to the 2014 World Dance Alliance Global Summit to talk, perform and share the latest in dance thinking and practice-led research. You’ll find some terrific tools and ideas that might change the way you approach your own creative or teaching practice, or inspire you to try something new.
Study dance in Australia
These universities and colleges offer full-time, specialist, post-secondary dance courses staffed by former artistic directors, choreographers, dancers and lecturers who train some of Australia's best dancers and dance teachers.
National qualifications for the dance industry
For the first time in Australia there are national qualifications for the dance industry. Innovation & Business Skills Australia (IBSA), in consultation with experts in the dance industry, have created a new training package for the dance sector. It is called the Live Performance Training Package (CUA11).
Enhancing learning in dance technique through online-mediated reflective practice
‘Practice makes perfect’ expresses the common misconception that repetitive practice without appropriate feed-back will deliver improvement in tasks being practised. This paper explores the implementation of a student-driven feedback mechanism and shows how functional and aesthetic understanding can be progressively enhanced through reflective practice. More efficient practice of clearly understood tasks will enhance dance training outcomes. We were looking for ways to improve teaching efficiency, effectiveness of the students’ practice in the studio and application of safe dance practices. We devised a web-based on-line format, ‘Performing Reflective Practice’, designed to augment and refine studio practice. Only perfect practice makes perfect!
Starting from here: dance in higher education from the inside out
Starting from here explores the realm of interconnected experiences that exist in the study of dance as a site of emergent learning, embedded in the practice of ‘becoming’ and framed by the expanding field of everyday aesthetics. The paper explores a collection of ideas which frame the disciplinary condition, made evident through current practice in the UK. The paper explores some of the ongoing translations of dance as a discipline of study, and articulates potential future disciplinary intersections in the context of ongoing social, economic and political turbulence.