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The Elements of Dance
What is Dance?
Dance is the art form in which human movement becomes the medium for sensing, understanding, and communicating ideas, feelings, and experiences. Dance provides a way of learning—one that develops communication abilities, problem solving techniques, and creative and critical thinking skills along with kinesthetic abilities. At its core, the goal of dance education is to engage students in artistic experiences through the processes of creation, performance and response.
The Elements of Dance
Dance has its own content, vocabulary, skills, and techniques, which must be understood and applied to be proficient in the art. The elements of dance are the foundational concepts and vocabulary for developing movement skills as well as understanding dance as an art form. All these elements are simultaneously present in a dance or even in a short movement phrase.
Body
The art of dance takes place in and through the human body. The renowned dance critic Walter Terry commented: No paints nor brushes, marbles nor chisels, pianos or violins are needed to make this art, for we are the stuff that dance is made of. It is born in our body, exists in our body and dies in our body. Dance, then, is the most personal of all the arts . . . it springs from the very breath of life. *
In dance, the body is the mobile figure or shape, felt by the dancer, seen by others. The body is sometimes relatively still and sometimes changing as the dancer moves in place or travels through the dance area. Dancers may emphasize specific parts of their body in a dance phrase or their whole body.
When we look at a dancer's whole body we might consider the overall shape design; is it symmetrical? twisted? Another way to describe the body in dance is to consider the body systems—muscles, bones, organs, breath, balance, reflexes. We could describe how the skeletal system or breath is used, for example. The body is the conduit between the inner realm of Intentions,
What is Dance?
Dance is the art form in which human movement becomes the medium for sensing, understanding, and communicating ideas, feelings, and experiences. Dance provides a way of learning—one that develops communication abilities, problem solving techniques, and creative and critical thinking skills along with kinesthetic abilities. At its core, the goal of dance education is to engage students in artistic experiences through the processes of creation, performance and response.
The Elements of Dance
Dance has its own content, vocabulary, skills, and techniques, which must be understood and applied to be proficient in the art. The elements of dance are the foundational concepts and vocabulary for developing movement skills as well as understanding dance as an art form. All these elements are simultaneously present in a dance or even in a short movement phrase.
Body
The art of dance takes place in and through the human body. The renowned dance critic Walter Terry commented: No paints nor brushes, marbles nor chisels, pianos or violins are needed to make this art, for we are the stuff that dance is made of. It is born in our body, exists in our body and dies in our body. Dance, then, is the most personal of all the arts . . . it springs from the very breath of life. *
In dance, the body is the mobile figure or shape, felt by the dancer, seen by others. The body is sometimes relatively still and sometimes changing as the dancer moves in place or travels through the dance area. Dancers may emphasize specific parts of their body in a dance phrase or their whole body.
When we look at a dancer's whole body we might consider the overall shape design; is it symmetrical? twisted? Another way to describe the body in dance is to consider the body systems—muscles, bones, organs, breath, balance, reflexes. We could describe how the skeletal system or breath is used, for example. The body is the conduit between the inner realm of Intentions,