We all love to move, to wiggle and jiggle, to bounce, to tap our feet—especially school children who are supposed to be sitting still at their desks. It should be easy, therefore, to cash in on children's natural inclination to express themselves through movement. It should be easy to involve them in something active that stimulates their kinesthetic intelligence—something that invigorates not just their brains but their whole bodies. It should be no trouble at all to come up with something fun and creative that also demands discipline and study—something like dance. Just add some rhythm and voilà! Even rambunctious 5th grade boys should take to the joys of dance like ducks to water. Right?
"Right!" insists Nelson Neal, president-elect of the National Dance Association. "Dance is even for those who think real guys don't dance. Dance is for all students."
Getting Past Inhibitions
Having successfully taught dance to thousands of K–8 children over the past 25 years as both PE coach and professor of dance at Longwood College in Virginia, Neal has discovered the secret of how to get everyone—teachers and students alike—more comfortable with the challenging and confidence-building experience of dance.
The first thing Neal does when he conducts dance workshops with young people is to ask them to pick a sport, any sport—something they already enjoy doing, such as basketball, wrestling, tennis, baseball, or soccer. If a student chooses basketball, for example, the next step is to name some basketball moves: dribbling, the fade-away jump, passing, the hook shot (or "sky hook" as today's kids like to call it).
Next, Neal directs children to change the speed of the movement—to speed it up or slow it down so that the simple movement of dribbling a basketball is transformed into a slow-motion modern dance, fluid and smooth. Finally, Neal has his novice dancers try the dribbling movement in other planes—horizontally instead of vertically, off the walls, sideways, over their heads, through their legs, in front of and behind themselves. "It begins to look like aerobics," he says of this two-minute dance, which he has named The Ultimate Sport.
"It's an especially good approach to use as a hook with 4th or 5th graders," Neal notes. "All kids can do it, and they do have fun—especially when they use music with the movement." He suggests starting with music that kids already like and then exposing them to a variety of music that's new to them but stimulates their imagination to create fresh expressions of old moves. Techno-pop as well as the high-energy overture to Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake could bring both exuberance and dynamics to basketball dribbling, he says. "It might be a good idea to involve the music teacher, too."
After students get past their inhibitions and start "running with the ball" (dancing), Neal suggests that the next level is to create a dance that combines motions from three different sports, such as launching a bowling ball, throwing a sky hook, and doing a wrestling take-down. "Kids come up with wonderful ideas!" he affirms. It's an approach that PE teachers and practically anyone else can facilitate, insists Neal. And with all the different choices for music, the possibilities for creative expression through movement are unlimited for either solo or group work. "Just start with something simple and short," he advises. "Human beings enjoy moving. Rhythm combined with movement helps them enjoy it even more."
Integrating Dance and Academics
As exhilarating as Nelson Neal's approach sounds, most teachers do not integrate dance into the content areas. Perhaps it is because dance is perceived as a frill—a fun idea but not really connected to academics. At Roger Williams Middle School in Providence, R.I., however, dance is a five-day-a-week core subject.
Teacher Sue McGreevy-Nichols, director of dance at Williams, collaborates with language arts and social studies teachers to use dance as a vehicle for academic projects and presentations. "We start with a core question," she explains, "such as, How does prejudice affect our lives?" Students explore this question through a semester-long study of Romeo and Juliet, culminating in a dance concert that is as educational as it is entertaining. "The audience is floored at how tremendous it is," she says.
But months before the performance, starting on the first day of school, students begin the project in their English classes by reading the play and watching movie versions of it: the 1968 Zeffirelli version set in 1595; the 1961 adaptation, West Side Story; and a 1996 interpretation by a Los Angeles performing company. "The first three weeks of school, we don't even dance. It's just study and preparation," says McGreevy-Nichols.
Indeed, there is much to study as students compare the three versions of Shakespeare's tragedy and learn about the effects of prejudice throughout history. For their own production, they must decide which scenes they want to perform by writing persuasive essays. Every essay that meets the writing standard becomes a "vote." Only scenes with enough votes will be produced. Students also analyze and design their own sets and costumes.
As for the dances, McGreevy-Nichols states that the main emphasis is not on teaching dance steps. "We're not training dancers; we're training thinkers," she says of her inner-city students, 92 percent of whom belong to minority groups. As they choreograph their own versions of Romeo and Juliet, her students are solving movement problems for expressing a storyline without words. "The performance looks something like modern dance," McGreevy-Nichols observes, "like something you might see on the Academy Awards."
To maintain accountability for their work, students keep portfolios. "These are not showcase portfolios but process portfolios," McGreevy-Nichols explains. "All their work goes in it. They receive a checklist of work that is qualified by rubrics. These indicate whether their work is below or above standard." Along the way, students learn the process of putting on a show.
"It's really very challenging work," she points out. "There are very few As. What we're really doing is teaching children how to think, how to do research, how to be creative people—all the things that are valued in the workforce."
One of the things about these projects that students especially like is that their teachers perform the dances along with them. "The teachers were reluctant at first," McGreevy-Nichols recalls. "I don't think they realized how much they would enjoy it. And the students think it's wild. They're all learning together and all making mistakes together. It's a great equalizer."
Dance as an Art Form
"Ballet is hard, Ms. Blizzard," two of Jill Blizzard's football-playing students recently told her. She wholeheartedly agrees, proud of the fact that her elective PE course, Introduction to Dance, at River Hill High School in Howard County, Md., is "a class that you work in."
With certification in K–2 dance education as well as PE, Blizzard is well qualified to instruct a fun yet demanding dance class for beginners. Her students learn not only techniques of ballet, tap dancing, modern dance, jazz, and some social dances but also dance history and terms as well as human anatomy and physiology, including the muscle and skeletal systems.
"When kids first come into my class, they're intimidated," she admits. "But I have them write journals every Friday. I have come to know where they are. It's amazing. They love this class."
In her semester-long courses, students choreograph a dance for each unit, taking responsibility also for their own costumes and lighting. The final project is their own choreography of a dance in small groups. A performance assessment counts for 50 percent of the final exam, balanced by a written assessment for the other 50 percent.
With the help of criteria embedded in the national dance standards, Blizzard has developed a rubric for evaluating dance performances according to five categories:
- Movement mechanics. Students can do the movement they choreographed with attention to transitions, flow through phrases, and correct technique.
- Spatial Awareness. Students demonstrate appropriate diagonal, circular, level, or zigzag motion in relation to other persons and space.
- Timing and Rhythm. Students dance with correct phrasing and counts per measure of music.
- Dynamics. Students demonstrate contrasts between fast and slow, sharp and flowing motions.
- Performance. Students demonstrate appropriate stage presence and facial expressions and don't let mistakes keep them from finishing the dance.
Blizzard also teaches an advanced course, known as The River Hill Dance Company. "This is the joy of my day," she says. "And they pay me to do this." Consisting of the top dancers in the school, the dance company performs often. "These kids are tops in the school academically, too," Blizzard notes. "It takes intellect to understand and connect through dance."
Conversely, others believe that the discipline of dance education enhances intelligence. The National Standards for Arts Education state that dance, along with the other arts, "cultivates the whole child, gradually building many kinds of literacy while developing intuition, reasoning, imagination, and dexterity into unique forms of expression and communication."
Besides building cognitive powers, dance education brings another benefit: it helps students get out the wiggles—so they can settle down, sit still, and concentrate on their academic work.