Discovering Dance is the premier introductory dance text for high school students. It helps students grasp the foundational concepts of dance and explore movement activities from the perspectives of a dancer, a choreographer, and an observer.

Discovering Dance opens up a world of opportunities for high school students who have little or no dance experience. The text, available in print and electronic forms, helps students understand the fundamentals of creating, performing, analyzing, understanding, responding to, connecting with, and evaluating dance in its various genres. It meets national and state dance education standards and addresses 21st-century learning goals. As such, it offers a complete introductory dance curriculum with the flexibility of being used for one or more years of instruction.

Accomplished dancer and artistic director Annelise Mertz provides both an aesthetic appreciation for creative movement education as well as practical pedagogy for incorporating dance and drama into the contemporary curriculum. The book gives voice to nineteen accomplished teachers, actors, dancers, directors, authors, and choreographers who share their experiences and address creative movement education from preschool through college. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

The material symbol has become central to understanding religion in late modernity. This book explores the lived experience of religion through its material expressions. Cutting across cultures, senses, disciplines and faiths, and including chapters on music, architecture, festivals, ritual, artifacts, dance, dress and magic, this book offers an invaluable resource to students of sociology and anthropology of religion, art, culture, history, liturgy, theories of late modern culture, and religious studies.

This book examines men, masculinities and sexualities in Western theatrical dance, offering insights into the processes, actions and interactions that occur in dance institutions around gender-transgressive acts, and the factors that set limits to transgression. This text uses interview and observation data to analyze the conditions that encourage some boys and young men to become involved in this widely unconventional activity, and the ways through which they negotiate the gendered and sexual attachments of their professional identity. Most importantly, the book analyzes the opportunities male dancers find to develop a reflexive habitus, engage in gender transgressive acts and experiment with their sexuality. At the same time, it approaches gender and sexuality as embodied, and therefore as parts of identity that are not as easily amendable. This book will be of interest to scholars in Gender and Sexuality Studies as well as Dance and Performance Studies.

Dance Teaching Methods and Curriculum Design, Second Edition, presents a comprehensive model that prepares students to teach dance in school and community settings. It offers 14 dance units and many tools to help students learn to design lesson plans and units and create their own dance portfolio

Winner, Oscar G. Brockett Book Prize in Dance Research, 2014 Honorable Mention, Sally Banes Publication Prize, American Society for Theatre Research, 2014 de la Torre Bueno® Special Citation, Society of Dance History Scholars, 2013 From Christopher Columbus to “first anthropologist” Friar Bernardino de Sahagún, fifteenth- and sixteenth-century explorers, conquistadors, clerics, scientists, and travelers wrote about the “Indian” dances they encountered throughout the New World. This was especially true of Spanish missionaries who intensively studied and documented native dances in an attempt to identify and eradicate the “idolatrous” behaviors of the Aztec, the largest indigenous empire in Mesoamerica at the time of its European discovery. Dancing the New World traces the transformation of the Aztec empire into a Spanish colony through written and visual representations of dance in colonial discourse—the vast constellation of chronicles, histories, letters, and travel books by Europeans in and about the New World. Scolieri analyzes how the chroniclers used the Indian dancing body to represent their own experiences of wonder and terror in the New World, as well as to justify, lament, and/or deny their role in its political, spiritual, and physical conquest. He also reveals that Spaniards and Aztecs shared an understanding that dance played an important role in the formation, maintenance, and representation of imperial power, and describes how Spaniards compelled Indians to perform dances that dramatized their own conquest, thereby transforming them into colonial subjects. Scolieri’s pathfinding analysis of the vast colonial “dance archive” conclusively demonstrates that dance played a crucial role in one of the defining moments in modern history—the European colonization of the Americas.

This book is about dance’s relationship to language. It investigates how dance bodies work with the micromovements elicited by language’s affective forces, and the micropolitics of the thought-sensations that arise when movement and words accompany one another within choreographic contexts. Situating itself where theory meets practice—the zone where ideas arise to be tested, the book draws on embodied research in practices within the lineages of American postmodern dance and Japanese butoh, set in dialog with affect-based philosophies and somatics. Understanding that language is felt, both when uttered and when unspoken, this book speaks to the choreographic thinking that takes place when language is considered a primary element in creating the sensorium.

This dance journal follows author, researcher, and university lecturer Laura Kline as she embarks on a unique journey towards heightened awareness. It records her daily insecurities as a fifty-five-year-old dance student—doing undercover research for her next lesbian romance novel—at her own university. Nervous about joining this high-risk contact improvisation class, she soon realizes what a tremendous opportunity it offers the protagonists, two fictional female dancers who fall in love. Little does she suspect how this course, along with her weekly 5Rhythms® dance sessions, will impact her personal growth and worldview, by forcing her to slow down and experience the intense flavor of each moment. It even enhances her survival skills. When the COVID-19 pandemic hits, her daily journal reflections broaden to include noisy neighbors, walls closing in on her, her partner, and their cat during the sudden stay-at-home order, struggles with teaching remotely, loss of sleep, weight loss, etc. Without realizing it, Laura becomes the protagonist of her own book—this journal. Her lively and humoristic adventure through dance illustrates how becoming present—even for five short minutes while standing still in pure silence—what she calls the Happy Dance—can literally lift people up, providing a safe space to traverse unexpected rocky roads. Her expedition is pebbled with injury and stress, yet she continues dancing. Page by page, with Laura’s stick-figure illustrations, we gradually see how Laura unearths a youthful buoyancy in her musculoskeletal system, lubricating her achy joints, giving them a bounce as she treads barefoot into the kitchen—or masters the moonwalk in her school’s photocopy room. Through a deep exploration of mindful movement and contact improvisation, we observe Laura as she dances her way to greater health, stability, healing, and happiness.

History of Dance, Second Edition, offers readers a panoramic view of dance from prehistory to the present. The text covers the dance forms, designs, artists, costumes, performing spaces, and accompaniments throughout the centuries and around the globe. Its investigative approach engages students in assignments and web projects that reinforce the learning from the text, and its ancillaries for both teachers and students make it easy for students to perceive, create, and respond to the history of dance. New to This Edition History of Dance retains its strong foundations from the first edition while adding these new and improved features: • An instructor guide with media literacy assignments, teaching tips, strategies for finding historical videos, and more • A test bank with hundreds of questions for creating tests and quizzes • A presentation package with hundreds of slides that present key points and graphics • A web resource with activities, extensions of chapter content, annotated links to useful websites, and study aids • Developing a Deeper Perspective assignments that encourage students to use visual or aesthetic scanning, learn and perform period dances, observe and write performance reports, develop research projects and WebQuests (Internet-based research projects), and participate in other learning activities • Experiential learning activities that help students dig deeper into the history of dance, dancers, and significant dance works and literature • Eye-catching full-color interior that adds visual appeal and brings the content to life Also new to this edition is a chapter entitled “Global Interactions: 2000–2016,” which examines dance in the 21st century. Resources and Activities The web resources and experiential learning activities promote student-centered learning and help students develop critical thinking and investigative skills.Teachers can use the experiential learning activities as extended projects to help apply the information and to use technology to make the history of dance more meaningful. Three Parts History of Dance is presented in three parts. Part I covers early dance history, beginning with prehistoric times and moving through ancient civilizations in Greece, Crete, Egypt, and Rome and up to the Renaissance. Part II explores dance from the Renaissance to the 20th century, including a chapter on dance in the United States from the 17th through 19th centuries. Part III unfolds the evolution of American dance from the 20th century to the present, examining imported influences, emerging modern dance and ballet, and new directions for both American ballet and modern dance. Chapters Each chapter focuses on the dancers and choreographers, the dances, and significant dance works and literature from the time period. Students will learn how dance design has changed through the ages and how new dance genres, forms, and styles have emerged and continue to emerge. The chapters also include special features, such as History Highlight sidebars and Time Capsule charts, to help students place dancers, events, and facts in their proper context and perspective. Vocabulary words appear at the end of each chapter, as do questions that prompt review of the chapter’s important information. The text is reader-friendly and current, and it is supported by the national standards in dance, arts education, social studies, and technology education. Through History of Dance, students will acquire a well-rounded view of dance from the dawn of time to the present day. This influential text offers students a foundation for understanding and a springboard for studying dance in the 21st century.