The development of Dance Education in US in 20th centure

                                                                                                  Tatiana  Domovidova

                                                                                                  Dance Pedagogy  6206

                                                                                                  Assignment 1

               The development of Dance Education in US

                               in 20th centure.

Dance has been a part of U.S. public education since the early 1900s, when the concepts of gymnasium and open-air exercise were becoming popular in Europe. National dances were developed, taught, and situated in the gymnasium, which emphasized the importance of attending to both the child’s physical and social development in schools. In the first decade of the 20^th centure  the "national dance" gradually giving way to more sophisticated techniques such as rhythm.

Gertrude Colby developed the “natural dances,” based on the art of  the ancient Greeks. Popular dancers such as Isadora Duncan and her protégés emphasized movement founded on the law of natural motion and rhythm. The leaders of this movement went to the Greeks because they had accorded dance so high a place in the education of youth. From the Greeks, the leaders learned again the educational value of dance and the need for a technique which rests upon fundamental, natural principles, and not upon unnatural body positions.

By the late 1920s science began to influence to the  dance education .Margaret H’Doubler began the first teacher in dance, centered on an understanding of the science and rhythmic underpinnings of movement. She  was trying to criate an appropriate dance “worth a college woman’s time,” and develop the theory for teaching dance conceptually, with “a theoretical framework for thinking about and experiencing dance and a philosophical attitude toward teaching it as a science and a creative art.”

In the 1920s and ’30s.  Emile Jacques-Dalcroze developed his work in Eurhythmics.  He adapted musical study to rhythmic movement exercises or “moving plastic,” in order to “break natural patterns” and “strive for mental and physical equilibrium.” Concentration, relationship to work, reflex action, and “free play and expansion of imagination and joy” were the goals of his approach to children’s movement and music.

In the 1930s Rudolph Laban combined scientific inquiry with the natural as he wrote extensively about dance education, particularly modern dance. In Modern Educational Dance Laban presents a complete developmental plan for children dancing from birth through adulthood, and introduces his seminal work on movement analysis. He offers his 16 Basic Movement Themes concerned with the body in space, with weight; and the eight basic effort actions, which have to do with force; and begins describing ways to think about and observe movement by dividing space into a sphere—the seed of Labanotation.

In the 1950s, the growing popularity of psychology and its influence on the educational curriculum heavily impacted dance education. Like their early childhood contemporaries, dance educators added the development of self-esteem as a rationale for their work. Individual awareness and expression were the themes of the decade’s creative dance books, such as Gladys Andrews’ Creative Rhythmic Movement for Children. She  speaks to the importance of creative dance for the “whole” child  she describes how teacher and child learn together through movement experiences. Andrew writes, “Competent teachers must know and understand children. They must know why they act the way they do and why individual differences among children are so important in the educative process.” Andrews not only describes the child as whole—body, mind, emotions, interrelated and interactive—but also  includes a Children’s Bill of Rights in Creative Rhythmic Movement.

The brain research in 1960s and ’70s  informing educators about the right and left hemispheres of the brain and their independent and intertwined functions for cognitive development. Dance educators such Geraldine Dimonstein and Mary Joyce were two major influences during this time. Dimondstein was intellectual, and philosophical, Joyce practical and accessible; both concerned themselves with defining the elements of dance in language they believed would speak to the classroom teacher.

In the ’80s and ’90s came aerobics and the fitness craze, which replaced dance and other

artistic movement preferences.

In the 1980s and 1990s, economics and politics had a major impact on both education and the arts.   Not worth funding in that belt-tightening decade, dance was considered a frill. The disappearance of art programs furthered the notion that the arts were superfluous to the more important work to be accomplished in school. In fact, both arts and education programs lost funding. Some schools dispensed physical education and dance teachers.

 With time things were  improved . Popular dance educators Anne Green-Gilbert and Susan Stinson expanded the early frameworks of Laban and Bartenieff into dance curriculum grounded in contemporary learning theories, brain research, and critical pedagogy. Gilbert founded the Creative Dance Center in Seattle, Washington. Stinson, working out of the University of North Carolina, continues to push the field forward with provocative, research-based discourse on the purpose and practice of dance education. Both worked with professionals within the National Dance Association and National Dance Education Organization to develop national standards for dance.