Dancing Across Borders Perspectives on Dance, Young People and Change

Dancing Across Borders presents formal and non-formal settings of dance education where initiatives in different countries transcend borders: cultural and national borders, subject borders, professional borders and socio-economic borders. It includes chapters featuring different theoretical perspectives on dance and cultural diversity, alongside case narratives that show these perspectives in a specific cultural setting. In this way, each section charts the processes, change and transformation in the lives of young people through dance.

Key themes include how student learning is enhanced by cultural diversity, experiential teaching and learning involving social, cross-cultural and personal dimensions. This conceptually aligns with the current UNESCO protocols that accent empathy, creativity, cooperation, collaboration alongside skills- and knowledge-based learning in an endeavour to create civic mindedness and a more harmonious world.

This volume is an invaluable resource for teachers, policy makers, artists and scholars interested in pedagogy, choreography, community dance practice, social and cultural studies, aesthetics and interdisciplinary arts. By understanding the impact of these cross-border collaborative initiatives, readers can better understand, promote and create new ways of thinking and working in the field of dance education for the benefit of new generations.

List of contributors Foreword by Sir Ken Robinson Acknowledgements Introduction PART 1 - Collaborations across arts practice and academia 1 Dancing past categories: Researching a live art project with participants (UK) (Pat Thomson and Emily Pringle) 2 ‘It’s all about art!’ Crossing borders of academia and arts practice in an arts-integrated educational project in South Africa (South Africa) (Charlotte Svendler Nielsen, Gerard M. Samuel, Peter Vadim, Fabian Hartzenberg, and Liesl Hartman) 3 Softening the boarders of codification (Singapore) (Susan Sentler) 4 A step offstage to restage: Remembering Swan Lake (USA) (Ravenna Tucker Wagnon) 5 Shapeshifting collaborative paradigms across borders, within tertiary choreographic education (New Zealand) (Sarah Knox) PART 2 - Difference and diversity - community initiatives 6 Fostering intercultural competence and social justice through dance and physical education: Finnish PE student teachers’ experiences and reflections (Finland) (Mariana Siljamäki and Eeva Anttila) 7 Sustaining dance practices in turbulent times: Dance, displacement, identity and the Syrian Civil War (Syria and Germany) (Rose Martin) 8 Children’s dance across borders during the Festival of the Children of Mountains in Nowy Sącz (Poland) (Monika Kurzeja) 9 Unlocking joy in the body: Creative movement with Yazidi refugees in Northern Iraq (Iraq) (Lydia J. Mathis) 10 Who sets the limits for us?- dance for equal movement rights in Estonia (Estonia) (Anu Sööt and Raido Mägi) PART 3 - Intercultural collaborations in dance education 11 Women of consequence (WOC) – ambitious, ancillary and anonymous: A cross-border arts-based research project between South Africa and USA (USA and South Africa) (Lynette Young Overby, Lisa Wilson and Dianna Ruberto) 12 Brazil and Denmark dance encounters: A case study of intercultural artistic coexistences in higher educational contexts. (Brazil and Denmark) (Deborah Dodd Macedo) 13 Dancing across the wall(s) of exclusion: reflections of two dance teachers on overcoming barriers to difference in dance education (USA and Uganda) (Alfdaniels Mabingo and Susan Koff) 14 Sum of our ancestors: we are connected to spirit and to Country – we are the sum of our ancestors? (Australia) (Jo Clancy) 15 Disrupting the ‘foreign’ and the ‘indigenous’: teaching dance as an investigative practice in the contemporary Indian context (India) (Meghna Bhardwaj) 16 Crossing Borders by teaching dance around the world (International) (Laura Kool) PART 4 - Integrated arts 17 The significance of an interdisciplinary arts pedagogical approach for dance teaching artists on dance education in Singapore (Singapore) (Kie Watkins and Stephanie Burridge) 18 Artistic process as a frame for collaborative, embodied pedagogies: combining dance with language learning (Finland) (Hanna M. Nikkanen, Katja Kirsi and Eeva Anttila) 19 Breaking the fourth wall: Getting closer to the audience through participatory experience of dance. (Hong Kong) (Anna C.Y. Chan) 20 Learning through an artistic experience: Connecting dance and fine art in the project ‘Movement and its trace’ (Slovenia) (Vesna Geršak and Uršula Podobnik) PART 5 - Collaborations across subjects and educational sectors 21 The role of movement, dynamics and expression in children’s drawings of dancing (Australia) (Susan Wright and Jan Deans) 22 Reaching back to move forward: performing the archive as interdisciplinary artistic-educational process (South Africa) (Alan Parker and Gerard M. Samuel) 23 Magic in movements! The art of teaching creative dance through the cultural schoolbag (Norway) (Kristine Høeg Karlsen, Gunhild Brænne Bjørnstad and Heidi Remberg Høeg) 24 Dance in nursing education: Somatic awareness, improvisation and embodied leadership (Denmark) (Helle Winther) 25 Moving onto, into and between the boxes: Surfaces and volumes as the triggers for children’s movement (Indonesia) (Paramita Atmodiwirjo and Yandi Andri Yatmo) Index

Charlotte Svendler Nielsen is Associate Professor and Head of Studies at the Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports research cluster “Embodiment, Learning and Social Change” University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

Stephanie Burridge lectures at LASALLE College of the Arts and Singapore Management University and is Series Editor for Routledge Celebrating Dance in Asia and the Pacific.