Legacy in Dance Education: Essays and Interviews on Values, Pract ...

The degree to which the dancer is expected to submit control over her body to the teacher is a topic of legacy in dance education that is worthy of our consideration. For more on the matter of body authority and dance, see: Jill Green, (2002–2003) “Foucault and the training of docile bodies in dance education.” Arts and Education (19)1: 99–126.

Dancers take much from their mentors and teachers in values and in practices as our experiences with our teachers involve deep experiences of the body. We absorb and sustain many of the devices, traits, and characteristics of our mentors. Sometimes we quickly absorb a trait or approach, a tone, a movement, or sympathy for a value. Or we may find we have changed but well after the fact, when we wake up to the knowledge that, “I’m doing this just as she did!” We carry forward consciously and by choice, we carry forward unconsciously and through habit, we sustain through our own doing of the thing done, and we sustain the legacy of dance education through telling others about our values, our practices, and the people who have inspired us. Legacy for dance in education comes into play in teaching forms, in teaching choreography, in teaching dance science, in pedagogies for specific populations, in aesthetics, and in cultural study. It comes into play in curriculum design and in differences between curricula at beginning, intermediate, and advanced levels. Legacy comes into play when we change our approach or suggest revisions to our methodologies. And because legacy in dance education is such a wonderfully broad topic, contributors to this text address a similarly wide range of subject matter related to dance in education.

For Legacy in Dance Education: Essays and Interviews on Values, Practices, and People, I have assembled the voices and contributions of some of the field’s most prominent dance educators. What do they find in their own value systems, pedagogy or professional work that connects them to legacy? Who were their teachers? What do they think was left them? How would they change legacy, or add or subtract evidence of legacy in shaping the field’s sense of identity? What is important for dance educators to consider about legacy in teaching to the subject––in technique, choreography, pedagogy, aesthetics, history, science or other?