Difference Matters

Abstract

Recognising Laban’s vision for dance education as being one of an ongoing unfolding, dance educators seem, over the last century or so, to have become somewhat adept at adapting, diversifying and surviving in what are sometimes harsh educational environments. Qualities that became particularly noticeable when embracing a pluralist, postmodern paradigm as a timely response to the global vicissitudes of migration and multiculturalism. As dance educators respond to matters of difference, as experienced in a pluralist society and as expected from within a critical pedagogy, they become part of nearly a century of the unfolding of dance education, and they could even be portrayed as being ‘profoundly revolutionary’.