Dance in Schools: Valuing the Questions (2006)

Abstract

The author notes that, after 35-plus years in dance education, she is convinced that there are no final answers to the most important questions, only temporary decisions made within specific contexts, and that she finds the questions more interesting than the answers. Her questioning in this text is organized into three interrelated issues. One focuses on the query, “Whose movement are we teaching?” The second has to do with the primacy of the lived experience of dancing and implications for teaching skills of interpretation and critical thinking, while the third centers on assessment. In each case, the author critiques the common assumptions of dance educators, such as the notion that creative dance uses children’s “natural” movement, and challenges many of her own core values. Rejecting the mantle of “expert,” she expresses the hope that exposing and probing her own questioning process will give others courage to engage in this process as well.