Additional Information
Dance as a creative experience offers a mode of expression with particular emphasis on the felt component. Dance education provides experiences involving the physical as well as the mental processes and thereby often reaches those who may not respond to verbal approaches alone. Dance serves in the interest of good health, adding a considerable measure of energetic release and fulfillment to a persons life. At the same time it provides a demanding type of exercise that encourages one to be joyfully active, physically active. Dance education can relate to and enhance other academic areas: language arts, mathematics, science and social science. The elements of dance: line, pattern, shape, space, time, rhythm, energy, force, matter, weight, are common concepts underlying many subjects that help contribute to learning. Children dancing means increased capacity for learning, a better grasp of most, if not all, of their academic subjects. This creative dance class offers the child a chance to move, feel, think, and know about their environment. It is developing kinesthetic awareness and sensitivity; it is being able to express all the revelations of the self and life through movement. (credit: Nancy Kupka, Dance Department Professor of Theatre and Arts at Cal State LA).
