Andrea Burghart
Dance & Literacy
Moving Forward…
What is Dance Literacy?
“Dance, drama, musical and the visual arts as different and distinct forms of representation or sign and symbols
systems are vital to the development of the whole person because they are each particular forms of
experience and of understanding.”
- Tina Hong, Developing Dance Literacy in the Postmodern: An Approach to Curriculum
http://arts.unitec.ac.nz/reflect/readings/danceliteracy.php
• What is dance?
• How can we develop our literacy in dance?
Genre
•Ballet
•Modern
•Tap
•Jazz
•Pointe
•Lyrical
•Social
•Cultural
•Ballroom
•Swing
•Tango
•Folk Dance
Gender
Male dancers:
Where are the men in dance?
Why don’t we see more of them?
What encourages and discourages men from studying dance?
Age
At what age can you dance? Even our ideas of the “right” age for dancing need to expand. The Liz Lerman
Dance Exchange is a performing dance company with members of all ages.
Educational Centers
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Home / Family
Community
Public School
Private Studio
Social Events
Where do we dance?
Where do we learn to dance?
Where do we perform dances?
****Does education only happen within a
“learning center” or can it occur during
performance experiences and outside of a
classroom?****
Connections: Dance &
Reading
• Kinesthetic Reading
Dance education includes reading with our bodies to understand information on a different
level from cognitive reasoning. Dancers must read information kinetically and keep it in their
muscle memory.
• Visual Reading
In dance, we read other bodies visually as well as reading words, symbols and
texts visually to inform our movement and our ideas. Word walls can help
students integrate their visual understanding with the kinetic understanding they
are developing.
Going Forward
• Where can dance literacy go?
• What can we do to contribute?
How can technology help us develop our dance literacy?
•Videos
•Websites
•Blogs
•Sharing our knowledge online