This paper will attempt a reformulation of the concept of “feeling” in dance from a psychophysical perspective using ideas derived from F. M. Alexander and post-Heideggerian philosophy. It will seek to rearticulate the nature of human being as one that is vibrantly suspended between conscious subjectivity and a world illuminated by that consciousness. Viewed in this way, current prevailing ideas about “feeling” can be set aside and the practices of creation and spectatorship in dance can be reunited in a new way through a fresh understanding that takes into account the unreliability of “feeling” and its physiological and subjective reality.

Kinsella's metaphor of embodied reflection is extended into the context of performance pedagogy by exploring the implications of the work of F. M. Alexander in Dewey's notion of reflective thinking and the influence of Dewey's work on later thought on reflective practice. The perspective is that an experiential form of knowing underlies Deweyan reflection, which, if integrated into performance and its pedagogy, results in a different kind of qualitative value of both. Such integration could add to the concept of a critical and reflexive pedagogy, which “reflects the complexities of the interactions between teaching and learning.”

This project report explores new media software teaching practices within undergraduate dance programmes, specifically focusing on the Palatine Development Project Real-Time Video to Enhance Student Feedback in Dance Performance (2006–2008) and the experiences of teaching in the Digital Performance Module at University Centre Doncaster, United Kingdom. It discusses both teaching and learning experiences within the project and ways to engage dance students with real-time video within their own choreographic work.

The authors describe a model for teaching research and writing to graduate students in dance that they have been implementing and refining for the past five years. The model entwines scholarship, teaching, and artistry. Dils and Stinson reflect on two issues that arise from their teaching: embodiment as it relates to dance research and to online learning and maintaining high expectations for critical and reflective thinking in light of the developmental levels of students. Risner's survey on graduate dance programs in the United States is referred to within the presentation, including a brief excerpt from qualitative responses.

Professional ballet is often problematized, as is the training that leads up to it. Even when ballet's training model is not being held up as an example of outright abuse, its “old school” methods are generally considered authoritarian, outdated, and oppressive. However, pre-professional training is not always so dire, and more importantly, it does not have to be. The dance profession and training are changing: to reflect and strengthen emerging “new school” methods, teachers reworking the traditional model should be more active in sharing and asserting their ideas, and there should be greater interaction between academia and the studio.

Acknowledging the value of dance within education and as an art, this study examines teaching and learning experiences and their effect in the status and ethos of dance. The main focus of this study was to examine dance education and training in tertiary education (further and higher) in England and in Greece. The aim was to find similarities and differences in teachers' approaches in order to improve understanding of what affects students' learning experiences and future choices. Methodology is based on a comparative study, predominately qualitative, that focuses on individuals' experiences. The methods used were documentations, interviews, observations, and questionnaires from people who experience and teach dance within further education dance institutions. This study is part of a Ph.D. thesis.

This lecture-demonstration examines some of the tensions and contradictions found in the teaching of South Asian dance in Britain through using a demonstration by Leicester Kathak dancer Nilima Devi and evidence gleaned from Ann David's ethnographic research amongst dance students and teachers in Hindu communities in Leicester. It considers how issues of tradition and change within an arena seen as “cultural heritage” are incorporated into pedagogic practice. It questions different perceptions of dance by teenage students and their teachers, as well as articulating some of the problematic areas in the teaching of classical and popular dance forms, such as Kathak, Bharatanatyam, and Bollywood.

An increasing emphasis on multicultural and contextual studies approaches to dance education is evident in curriculum developments, with South Asian dance attaining a stronger presence in courses at British universities. This paper considers a range of aesthetic and pedagogic issues about how South Asian dance technique is situated in dance courses in relation to its position as a contextual subject. To what extent does technical training inform a contextual and aesthetic understanding? How do classical forms sit alongside training in contemporary dance and choreography?

I once read that the music we listen to during our high school and college years is the music that most resonates with us throughout our lifespan. I would suggest as well that the theory we encounter during a doctoral program will continue to resonate throughout our professional lives. This certainly has been true for me, and, in my case, there is congruence between the music and the theory, making for an even deeper attachment. In this presentation I will explore that attachment and also question it, giving voice to conflicting arguments and trying to resolve them. The internal dialogue made audible here was generated by the current intense focus on outcomes-based assessment in education.

From a Scandinavian perspective, the current scenario for dance education practice and research appears quite challenging. One great challenge seems to be preserving the basic values of democracy, equity, and access of the Nordic educational system that is being contested by neoliberal policies, much like elsewhere in the Western world. I am echoing Sue Stinson about the concerns that accountability and standardization have generated in preparing future dance teachers. The restraints seem to creep in from all directions. From the European Union and the Bologna process, higher education is affected by directives that compel us to reformulate the program goals in terms derived from Bloom's taxonomy (Bloom 1956). On the national level, increasing governmental regulations regarding higher education have altered the criteria for allocating funds, and beginning in January 2010 the whole system will drastically change toward privatization. Another significant national development is more difficult to discern but is even more disturbing.

Given our panel's focus, I will introduce myself by way of my undergraduate dance pedagogy course and highlight what I will be addressing in my remarks this morning. The young women in my dance pedagogy course bring considerable experience in modern, ballet, and jazz technique and are equally skilled as young performers. These students likely represent a good cross section of students in their third year of undergraduate dance programs in the United States. We begin this pedagogy course by looking at the students'experience of teaching in their own training and dance education.

Eeva Anttila (to Sue Stinson): One thing that comes to my mind is the conception/theory of learning that you currently feel most connected to. Could you clarify that? Is your conception in conflict with the learning objectives discourse that you have to deal with, and if yes, how so? Could you use some theoretical references to overcome this kind of demand that you are subjected to? For instance, constructivist learning theory is based on the idea that everyone learns different things, based on their previous experiences etc.

Through questionnaire data, the dance students at Tsoying High School in Taiwan offer an important perspective on dance technique. Engaging with Melanie Bales's concept of the “eclectic” body in American contemporary dance practices, I explore both the historical underpinnings and the students' experience of a Taiwanese curriculum that focuses on ballet, modern dance, and Beijing opera movement. Our conceptions of dance technique and their related pedagogies not only affect the dancer but also affect the integration of dance technique with the rest of the dance field and, subsequently, the role of dance in the greater culture.

This paper proposes two evaluating methods of traditional dances to put traditional dances in school education, taking Nihon Buyo as an example. One is a skill evaluation method using motion capture equipment. Digitized data of movements could provide scientific pedagogy and appraisal in school education. The other is an impression evaluation method using Semantic Differential (SD) method. Impressions that spectators get from Nihon Buyo can be statistically and objectively evaluated. Though traditional dances have various styles, techniques, and representations, these two methods could be applied differently to understand them scientifically and put them in school education in perspective on a global basis.

How can we make the history of dance meaningful for the practitioners of the future that we teach? In this presentation, I argue that we need a genealogical and metahistorical perspective to teaching history. Our students need to understand history not as something to be known but as something written and created and therefore constantly changing. It is possible to teach a canon critically, to make past dances and our need of these past dances relevant for today's practice.

Teaching dance history to the undergraduate “Millennial Student” is challenging on many levels. Due to the proliferation of mediated technologies, critics Sven Birkerts and Martin Bérubé are concerned that they are loosing the ability to read deeply and to think critically not so much because of the strong visual appeal of these technologies and communication media but because they encourage a voyeuristic view of human interactions that leaves little room for the privacy of the individual. The personal becomes public. There is no room left for the reflective self, the soul. This paper will explore pedagogical strategies centered on biography and autobiography that are intended to shift the student from being passive recipients of dance history to becoming imaginatively engaged in the creation of dance history.

The turn toward methodology and practice in higher education provides new incentive to reshape our pedagogical approaches. This presentation will advocate for teaching historical methods—specifically archival research and primary source analysis—in undergraduate dance history courses. While I argue that this approach has distinct pedagogical benefits, it also makes evident the disparity between asking students to think like dancers and asking them to think like historians and highlights the multidisciplinary nature of dance history.

“Diversity” is a buzzword in higher education. Over the past twenty-five years dance companies integrating disabled and nondisabled performers have developed methodologies effective in workshop and company training. Transferring these methods into mainstream teaching, providing a comprehensive training and education, proves both difficult and problematic. This workshop provides an insight into the research and practice based on the presenter's experience in integrated dance. Central to the research is to move integrated dance beyond adaptation, developing a skill-specific curriculum and applying methodologies, class structure, and material relevant to all participants consistent with main principles of universal design of instruction.

Dance education in Germany is traditionally based upon the concept of “aesthetic education.” This presentation delineates Rousseau's original terminology, contrasting it with the German interpretation, which reduces the originally reflexive idea to a simple antithesis of rationalism. This dualistic development is key to understanding the systematic exclusion of dance from formal education: at the moment in which dance is relegated to be the “other” of rationalism, it is guaranteed a position outside of rationally based educational concepts. The study of other art forms is included therein; why not dancei Is dance Germany's last bastion of irrationality?

Being interested in studying dance in Germany at a university inevitably leads to a department of sport science. Thus, dance (often coupled with rhythmic gymnastics to fuse into one subject) is obligatory within the studies of sport science. Taking a closer look at the practical dance seminars, one can easily identify inconsistencies in the conceptually intended interlinking of theory, research, and practice. However, the subject of dance at German universities is factually constrained with the enforced aim of exercising students in dance techniques and skills, and therefore it disregards the scientific claims of a predominant amount of theoretical and scientific theory and reflection.