Three Rs for Dance Education Now: Reexamine! Reevaluate! Reimagine!

Abstract

ABSTRACT America’s current sociocultural moment requires that we reexamine, reevaluate, and reimagine our dance education policy documents, curriculum, and classroom practice. This position paper raises questions about the assumptions underpinning our dance education archival discourse and infusing the language we use to articulate it. A return to scientific approaches to education featuring standardization and accountability, which threatens to further marginalize non-dominant voices, makes this inquiry urgent. I describe my current research as an example of this direction for inquiry. Referencing the standards' history, dance education’s historical influences and counter-narratives, and motor learning theories in cultural context, I propose that explicit and implicit cultural messages in our standards may convey Euro-Western aesthetic, epistemological, and pedagogical frameworks, reflecting widely accepted dance education practices. Further, I question whether our standards and our practice may be inadvertently perpetuating inequitable cultural narratives. The paper concludes with a charge for the dance education community.