This ethnographic case story aims to illuminate the instructional practices and decisions of an exemplary ballet teacher, Minna Stenvall at the Finnish National Opera Ballet School. Minna is considered to be exemplary in her field because she received the Best Ballet Pedagogue Award in 2014. Spurred on by the literature on the significant role…

This paper explores dance as literacy. Specifically, it examines qualitative case study research findings and student examples from a dance artist-in-residence that explored curricular content using dance as its primary mode of enquiry and expression. Throughout the residency, students constructed meaning through their dance experiences in dynamic…

This article presents the findings from a focus group discussion conducted with first year undergraduate dance students in March 2015. The focus group concluded a cycle of action research during which the researcher explored the use of enquiry-based learning approaches to teaching dance technique in higher education. Grounded in transformative and…

This article reports long-term fieldwork on jamming funk musicians' interaction from a combined anthropological, ethnographic, and grounded theory perspective. The study draws from over 20 years of data collection through personal interviews with New Orleans funk musicians, personal experiences with jamming and second-lining, and participant…

A local trend in commercial dance studio education is the implementation of real-time digital video surveillance. This case study explores how digital video cameras in the dance studio environment affect asymmetrical power relationships already present in the commercial studio setting, as well as how surveillance impacts feminist pedagogical…

The act of teaching is constituted by tensions between contradictory influences of national educational systems, teachers' professional/personal identity, cultural and social values. Qualitative research methods can explore this complex situation. Indeed, narrative methods have explored teachers' "life histories". This article provides a…

This article is the result of an interview with Judith Nelson conducted by Madeline Cantor. Madeline is the Associate Director of the Dance Program at Bryn Mawr College and a colleague and friend of Judith Nelson. In this article, Judith offers her perspective as a dance educator who teaches students with disabilities, and as a parent of a child…

Rhythm has been found to enhance not only biological functioning (e.g. balance, timing and coordination), but also to facilitate learning across sociocultural contexts. That is, rhythm may be a method of supporting child development and well-being. Hence, to the extent that children are not exposed to or engaged with rhythm, their development or…

This study reevaluates modern dance training in Korea and attempts to identify possible improvements. This study is based on the rationale that Korean modern dance training must recover its nature of a holistic connection between body and mind. A qualitative methodology was used to interpret data from in-depth interviews and open-ended…

This qualitative study investigated the impact of the mirror on a dancer's body image. Two groups of students enrolled in beginner ballet classes were taught the same classroom material; one group was taught with mirrors, the other, without. At the end of the semester four students from each class were randomly selected to participate in a private…

Is there a need for dance to enter higher education in Greece? Can contemporary dance be viewed as a discipline on its own right? These questions inspired the research conducted in three case study institutions (out of six that exist) in Greece, examining the reality within them as experienced by dance students, lecturers, course leaders and the…

Examining practice, within education, is complex and never straightforward. It is not a surprise that when we conduct research, we discover new and contrary meanings. For the last 16 months we have been examining different means for supporting teaching and learning of the arts in primary schools. Our aim was to better understand how to teach the…

Since hip-hop first appeared in New York over 35 years ago, it has been associated with social activism and education. Accordingly, it is not surprising that academic institutions in universities and K-12 schools are interested in hip-hop. In this article, we will highlight the "hip-hop academisation" and map out a new direction in a…

This article explores attitudes about feedback and critical thinking in dance technique classes. The authors discuss an expansion of their teaching practices to include feedback as bidirectional (transactional) and a part of developing critical thinking skills in student dancers. The article was written after the authors undertook research…

In this article, I draw critical attention to the assistive mobility devices that individuals who are differently bodied often use in dance and suggest that the dance genre presents the opportunity for reimagining the technological possibilities of these devices and creating more diverse repertoires. As an intervention and example, I describe the…