This popular textbook offers a clear introduction to community dance practice today. With an expert panel of contributors, including dance artists, practitioners and academics, it combines lively discussions with practical advice on duty of care, inclusive practice and project coordination. This new edition has been thoroughly revised to offer expanded coverage of community dance practices throughout the world, including in the US, Australia, Japan and Scandinavia. Guidance on entering the profession has also been fully updated, offering the most recent and relevant information and contacts. Featuring definitions of community dance, engaging case studies, informative interviews and a substantial resources section, this book is essential reading for both students and practitioners of community dance. Diane Amans is one of the leading practitioners in community dance. She is a dance artist, lecturer and consultant whose career has included working in education, managing dance projects in diverse community settings, and training staff in arts, health and social care.

This popular core textbook offers a clear introduction to community dance practice today, preparing students for the realities of employment in this dynamic and widely studied field. The text is edited by a highly-regarded professional with an international reputation for best practice in community dance, and includes chapters written by an expert panel of contributors, comprising dance artists, practitioners and academics. It combines lively discussion with practical advice on the duty of care, inclusive practice and project coordination. With its stimulating range of case studies, interviews and resources, the reader is encouraged to apply the facts and theories to their own practice. This text is aimed at undergraduate and postgraduate students on community dance degree programmes, as well as undergraduate and postgraduate students of dance, theatre and performance studies who are taking specific courses on community dance. It is also accessible to emerging and professional community dance practitioners.

Safe Dance Practice bridges the gap between research and application for dancers and dance educators at all levels. The book presents integrated guidelines and principles that will maximize physical and mental well-being without compromising creativity and expression.

This edited collection examines the potential of dance training for developing socially engaged individuals capable of forging ethical human relations for an ever-changing world and in turn frames dance as a fundamental part of human experience. This volume draws together a range of critical voices to reflect the inclusive potential of dance. The contributions offer perspectives on contemporary dance training in Britain from dance educators, scholars, practitioners and artists. Through examining the politics, values and ethics of learning dance today, this book argues for the need of a re-assessment of the evolving practices in dance training and techniques. Key questions address how the concept of ‘technique’ and associated systems of training in dance could be redefined to enable the collaboration of skills and application of ideas necessary to twenty-first-century dance. The editors present these ideas in different modes of writing. This collection of essays, conversations and manifestos offers a way to explore, debate and grasp the shifting values of contemporary dance. Examining these values in the applied field of dance reveals a complex and contrasting range of ideas, encompassing broad themes including the relationships between individuality and collectivity, rigour and creativity, and virtuosity and inclusivity. This volume points to ethical techniques as providing a way of navigating these contrasting values in dance. It serves as an invaluable resource for academics as well as practitioners and students.

Every dissertation is individual and unique - particularly for dance students, who must combine a wide range of approaches into a tailor-made research methodology. What Moves You? fosters a creative approach to dissertations and final projects. By guiding the development of a personal study program, this volume encourages dance students to take ownership of their artistic and academic work, a skill essential both to successful undergraduate study, and to making the first steps towards a career in dance. Rather than propose a prescriptive, step-by-step mantra, Charlotte Nichol and Lise Uytterhoeven draw upon contributions from students, teachers, examiners and practitioners to broaden the notion of ‘research’ and demystify the purpose of the dissertation.

Dance Research Methodologies: Ethics, Orientations, and Practices captures the breadth of methodological approaches to research in dance in the fine arts, the humanities, the social sciences, and the natural sciences by bringing together researchers from around the world writing about a variety of dance forms and practices. This book makes explicit the implicit skills and experiences at work in the research processes by detailing the ethics, orientations, and practices fundamental to being a researcher across the disciplines of dance. Collating together approaches from key subdisciplines, this book brings together perspectives on dance practice, dance studies, dance education, dance science, as well as dance research in cross-, multi-, and interdisciplinary fields. Practice-based chapters cover methodological approaches that provide rich examples of how research design and implementation are navigated by practicing scholars. Dance Research Methodologies also includes a practical workbook that helps readers to decide upon, refine, and enact their research, as well as develop ways in which to communicate their process and outcomes. This vital textbook is a valuable resource for research faculty interested in interdisciplinary conversation and practice, emerging scholars honing their methodological approaches, graduate students engaged in research-based coursework and projects, and advanced undergraduates.

In the last 30 years, a distinctive intersection between disability studies – including disability rights advocacy, disability rights activism, and disability law – and disability arts, culture, and media studies has developed. The two fields have worked in tandem to offer critique of representations of disability in dominant cultural systems, institutions, discourses, and architecture, and develop provocative new representations of what it means to be disabled. Divided into 5 sections: Disability, Identity, and Representation Inclusion, Wellbeing, and Whole-of-life Experience Access, Artistry, and Audiences Practices, Politics and the Public Sphere Activism, Adaptation, and Alternative Futures this handbook brings disability arts, disability culture, and disability media studies – traditionally treated separately in publications in the field to date – together for the first time. It provides scholars, graduate students, upper level undergraduate students, and others interested in the disability rights agenda with a broad-based, practical and accessible introduction to key debates in the field of disability art, culture, and media studies. An internationally recognised selection of authors from around the world come together to articulate the theories, issues, interests, and practices that have come to define the field. Most critically, this book includes commentaries that forecast the pressing present and future concerns for the field as scholars, advocates, activists, and artists work to make a more inclusive society a reality.

This book provides a comprehensive and concise overview of choreography both as a creative skill and as a field of study, introducing readers to the essential theory and context of choreographic practice. Providing invaluable practical considerations for creating choreography as well as leading international examples from a range of geographical and cultural contexts, this resource will enhance students’ knowledge of how to create dance. This clear guide outlines both historical and recent developments within the field, including how choreographers are influenced by technology and intercultural exchange, whilst also demonstrating the potential to address social, political and philosophical themes. It further explores how students can devise and analyse their own work in a range of styles, how choreography can be used in range of contexts – including site-specific work and digital technologies – and engages with communities of performers to give helpful, expert suggestions for developing choreographic projects. This book is a highly valuable resource for anyone studying dancemaking, dance studies or contemporary choreographic practice and those in the early stages of dance training who wish to pursue a career as a choreographer or in a related profession.

This book presents an analysis of how the grassroots movement of Guangchang Wu or ‘square dance’ in China has become a national phenomenon. Through oral narratives offering rich descriptions of lived encounters, the experiences of those involved in leading, organizing, teaching and learning Guangchang Wu are revealed. Through these narratives, this book serves to understand the leadership practices occurring and how this dance practice is deeply rooted in the complexities of China’s rapid economic development, acceleration of urbanisation, and the desire for a healthier and more communal lifestyle.

The arts have a crucial role in empowering young people with special needs through diverse dance initiatives. Inclusive pedagogy that integrates all students in rich, equitable and just dance programmes within education frameworks is occurring alongside enabling projects by community groups and in the professional dance world where many high-profile choreographers actively seek opportunities to work across diversity to inspire creativity. Access and inclusion is increasingly the essence of projects for disenfranchised and traumatised youth who find creative expression, freedom and hope through dance. This volume foregrounds dance for young people with special needs and presents best practice scenarios in schools, communities and the professional sphere. International perspectives come from Australia, Brazil, Cambodia, Canada, Denmark, Fiji, Finland, India, Indonesia, Jamaica, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Norway, Papua New Guinea, Portugal, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Taiwan, Timor Leste, the UK and the USA. Sections include: inclusive dance pedagogy equality, advocacy and policy changing practice for dance education community dance initiatives professional integrated collaborations