Teaching dance in tertiary institutions
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Child safe dance practices
Dance is a powerful space for self-expression, creativity, and growth. With more than 150,000 children participating in dance each week in Australia, organisations have a clear responsibility to protect their physical, emotional, and cultural wellbeing.
This factsheet provides national, cross-jurisdictional guidance to help dance organisations meet their obligations and embed child safety into every aspect of their practice. It was authored and approved in June 2025 by the Ausdance national network.
Ausdance Fact Sheet update — 2026
Ausdance has updated its Fact Sheets to include culturally appropriate teaching methods, the latest Safe Dance research, and compliance issues in risk managememnt and working with children.
Self and peer review in dance classes using personal video feedback
Many forms of formative feedback are used in dance training to refine the dancer’s spatial and kinaesthetic awareness in order that the dancer’s sensorimotor intentions and observable danced outcomes might converge. This paper documents the use of smartphones to record and playback movement sequences in ballet and contemporary technique classes. Peers in pairs took turns filming one another and then analysing the playback. This provided immediate visual feedback of the movement sequence as performed by each dancer. This immediacy facilitated the dancer’s capacity to associate what they felt as they were dancing with what they looked like during the dance. The often-dissonant realities of self-perception and perception by others were thus guided towards harmony, generating improved performance and knowledge relating to dance technique. An approach is offered for potential development of peer review activities to support summative progressive assessment in dance technique training.
Dance in higher education in the UK
Universities are not individually unique. They stand next to each other in the various hierarchies of excellence that are underpinned by commonalities of the various statures that they accrue in learning, teaching, research and a host of cultural and social impacts as are measured regionally, nationally and internationally. It is as we move toward closer international ties with our World Dance Alliance colleagues in higher education who work in dance that we look to our own ways and means with a view to revealing what we, in the UK, do in our delivery of dance to higher education students, and some of the constraints within which we work. With this in hand as a reference, we might then seek to discuss with our colleagues in other countries the many ways and means in which the similarities and differences have emerged from our various contexts as we all work towards inspiring the next generation of dancing graduates.
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.
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2011 Dance Education in Australian Schools Roundtable
The 2011 Dance Education in Australian Schools (DEAS) roundtable focused on providing feedback to the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) on the Draft Shape Paper: The Arts. The roundtable also heard from several speakers and organisations about their role in advocating for dance in the curriculum. The roundtable was facilitated by dance educator and author David Spurgeon.
Publications View all
Panpapanpalya 2018
This publication of 16 papers with authors from 9 countries provides a snapshot representation of themes from the joint dance congress broadly embracing dance, gathering, generations, learning. The papers range from the beginnings of dance in the early years through the different stages of school and to further education – and beyond through the lifespan to the joys and challenges of dancing in later years with lived experiences that bring changing bodies, new insights and wisdom.
Dance, young people and change
Dance, Young People and Change brought together young people, parents, educators and others from around the world to share and consider the role of dance in young people’s lives. It provided critical evaluation and reflection on approaches to dance learning, teaching and curriculum for young people and offered opportunities to critique the relevance of dance for young people within education and community contexts.
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TDCA advocates for Dance Education across all sectors of the community
The Tertiary Dance Council of Australia (TDCA) is advocating for dance education and its role in society at all educational levels, from early childhood through to tertiary education and beyond.
By examining these connections and making them visible, we advocate for a more integrated, holistic approach to dance education policy and practice.
Just as the full picture emerges when dots are joined visually, the true value of dance education becomes apparent when we connect its impacts across social, emotional, cognitive, cultural, therapeutic, and professional domains.
In this paper, entitled Joining the Dots: Advocating for the Role of Education Across All Sectors of the Dance Community, the TDCA presents comprehensive evidence demonstrating the significant positive impacts of dance education across mutiple domains of Australian society.
Drawing on a substantial body of international and Australian research, we establish that dance education enhances socio-emotional competence and critical thinking skills in children and adolescents, providing them with essential tools for personal development and academic success.
Dance education improves mental health outcomes and general wellbeing across various demographics, offering therapeutic benefits that address contemporary health challenges. Additionally, dance provides unique cultural and healing benefits for First Nations communities, supporting cultural continuity and addressing intergenerational trauma.
—Dr Peter Cook, USQ
Chair, TDCA
Tertiary Dance Council responds to political interference in ARC grant programs
The Tertiary Dance Council of Australia (TDCA) is comprised of academic members from Australian higher education institutions that offer programs in Dance and Dance Education. It exists under the auspices of Ausdance National, and is chaired by Associate Professor Peter Cook of the University of Southern Queensland.
The TDCA is seriously concerned about the Federal Government’s re-prioritisation of research funds, resulting in ministerial intervention and the enacting of veto powers in relation to the Australian Research Council’s Discovery Grants and Linkage programs.
The TDCA has recently made a submission to the Senate's Australian Research Council Amendment (Ensuring Research Independence) Bill 2018.
Australian dance educators are also being encouraged to sign the Australian Parliament House Petition to prevent political interference in ARC funding grants (closing on 16 March).
Dance in Proximity: World Dance Alliance Asia Pacific Conference & AGM
Taipei National University of the Arts, 10–11 November 2017
There were some special moments at the Dance in Proximity conference, hosted in Taiwan by the Taipei National University of the Arts in November, and organised by a wonderful team of artists, choreographers and teachers, led by Yunyu Wang.
Munguntsetseg Munkhbadrakh demonstrating traditional Mongolian dance movements during the Cross-cultural Dance Education session. Photo Julie DysonDance and science—knowledge and creativity.
There is so much we still have to learn about dance. Human bodies have been dancing for centuries and some of our training techniques have been passed on from generation to generation.
At Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, Dr Emma Redding, head of dance science, is leading a growing group of researchers and students applying scientific methods to the dance training we do every day, seeking to gain knowledge about the body and the impact of dance.