Curriculum Standard One: The student will develop body awareness; movement communication skills; and a capacity for movement response, motor efficiency, and multisensory integration. 1. The student will be competent in many movement activities. A. Can the student consistently respond from the center of the body to various stimuli and perform movement sequences of increasing complexity, which are taught by a variety of sources? The student will use technical skills to express movement, provided by the instructor, that is increasingly clearer and deeper in emotional tone, dramatic intent, and artistic style. The student will demonstrate the ability to effectively communicate dance movement phrases to his/her peers. The student will demonstrate the ability to perform the dance movements of his/her peers with technical accuracy and clarity of emotional or dramatic intent. The student will perform the dances of professionals and expand his/her natural inclinations and learned technical skills to include ranges of movement that challenge the individual student. 1
Curriculum Standard Two: The student will explore dance elements and perform dance movements, using the skills, vocabulary, and language of dance. 1. The student will utilize skills and language while exploring dance elements. A. Can the student dancer perform dances with interpretive musicality and correctness; handle polyrhythms in his/her own body with confidence; and dance musically with or without accompaniment? B. Can the student utilize improvisation to explore various dance elements? The student will create and perform combinations and variations, using meters, and compose complex phrases or dances that consist of several changes in meter and rhythmic patterns. The student will create dances projecting insightful artistic expression, clarity, musicality, and stylistic nuance. The student will create and perform combinations and variations, using the full range of the elements of space, time, and force. The student dancer will demonstrate deep understanding of the use of space by choreographing a dance phrase using the spatial ideas of a master choreographer. 2
Curriculum Standard Three: The student will make connections between dance composition and performance and healthful living. 1. The student will correlate the importance of healthy living through the art of dance. A. Can the student exhibit an awareness of safety and injury prevention while participating in dance class? B. Can the student monitor growth in skill development and performance ability in regular written or performance analyses which emphasize anatomy and physical challenges? C. Can the student communicate how dance can contribute to a healthy self? The student will demonstrate safety factors within dance technique. While performing movement phrases, the student dancer will demonstrate the ability to correctly execute standard techniques to prevent injury. Through the use of written and skill performance analysis, the student dancer will continue to self-assess and set more challenging physical goals. The student dancer will use written or performance analyses of skill and performance level to set new physical self-challenges. Through a pre and post self evaluation, the student will demonstrate how dance can contribute to his/her personal healthy self. 3
Curriculum Standard Four: The student will use choreographic principles and processes to express perceptions, feelings, images, and thoughts. 1. The student will create dance movement through choreographic principles. 2. The student will create movement through a variety of stimuli. A. Can the student organize improvisational ideas into the choreography of dances that demonstrate basic dance concepts and principles? A. Can the student create movement when given a variety of stimuli? (i.e., emotions, colors, textures, scenarios) B. Can the student identify and perform the vocabulary of time in relation to dance? The student will choreograph dances that demonstrate clarity of intent, unity, originality, and coherent form. The student will demonstrate improvisational skills. The student will create a dance that reflects the principles of choreography through exploration of feelings, images, and thoughts. The student will choreograph movement phrases that demonstrate the ability to contrast and compare acceleration, deceleration, legato, adagio, and syncopation. 4
Curriculum Standard Five: The student will create and communicate meaning through dance composition and performance. 1. The student will be choreographically capable of communicating meaning through dance. A. Can the student create dances based on contemporary social themes and discuss the relationship of expressive movement, motifs, phrases, and dance compositions to meaning? B. Can the student, using the aesthetic language of dance, formulate and answer questions about the way in which specific movement choices communicate abstract ideas? The student will complete a research project through which a theme can be explored (i.e., cultures, environmental issues, historical events, clothing, trends, social issues). Through execution, written assignments, and class discussion, the student will compare and contrast various styles of dance and their methods of conveying meaning. The student will choreograph dance phrases which convey meaning through dance from a variety of cultural/historical perspectives. 5
Curriculum Standard Six: The student will develop knowledge and understanding of human diversity through dance. 1. Through movement exploration and observation, the student will gain an understanding of human diversity. A. Can the student perform complex folk, historical, cultural, and contemporary dances from his/her own and others cultures? B. Can the student dancer explore and discuss why and how people dance and how dance reflects culture? The student will perform complex folk, historical, cultural, and contemporary dances from his/her own and others cultures. After exposure to historical, cultural and contemporary dance styles (i.e., film, video, or computer notation), the student will reflect basic societal values through class discussion and written assignments. C. Can the student dancer compare and contrast various historical, cultural, and contemporary dance styles and forms? After reviewing videotapes, films, or computer notations of various historical, cultural, and contemporary dance styles and forms, the student will write an analysis of their cultural commonalities and differences. 6
Curriculum Standard Seven: The student will investigate the role of dance in historical and contemporary cultures. 1. The student will generate a response to historical and contemporary dance. A. Can the student analyze the influence of cultural and historical dance styles? The student will hypothesize about and compare and contrast the ways that dances may have been different if created in previous eras. The student will research historical dance styles and forms in relation to social, political, economic, and technological forces. The student will identify and perform long and complex phrases from a variety of different traditions and types of dance. 7
Curriculum Standard Eight: The student will analyze, interpret, and judge dance in accord with learned aesthetic principles. 1. The student will incorporate analytical skills for interpretation of dance. A. Can the student dancer refine a group choreographed dance, selfchoreographed dance phrase, and analyze in writing his/her artistic decisions and the resulting developments? B. Can the student establish a set of aesthetic criteria, based on his/her own preferences and the parameters of established dance criticism, and apply them in evaluations of dance? C. Can the student observe and discuss the effects of technology on contemporary dance styles and forms? The student will create dance phrases and combinations and revise it over time, articulate the reasons for his/her artistic decisions, and analyze the developments from those decisions. The student dancer will research the aesthetic criteria applied to different forms of dance techniques and styles, noting how the criteria compare and contrast with his/her personal aesthetic. The student will note his/her preferences and biases. The student dancer will review video tape and/or films of various dance forms through the decades and identify the changes made through technological advances. 8