Dance Standards

• Summary

Achievement Standard, Proficient:

• Students demonstrate appropriate skeletal alignment, body-part articulation, strength, flexibility, agility, and coordination in locomotor and nonlocomotor/axial movements 
• Students identify and demonstrate longer and more complex steps and patterns from two different dance styles/traditions 
• Students demonstrate rhythmic acuity 
• Students create and perform combinations and variations in a broad dynamic range 
• Students demonstrate projection while performing dance skills 
• Students demonstrate the ability to remember extended movement sequences 

• Students demonstrate a high level of consistency and reliability in performing technical skills 
• Students perform technical skills with artistic expression, demonstrating clarity, musicality, and stylistic nuance 
• Students refine technique through self-evaluation and correction 

Achievement Standard, Proficient:

• Students use improvisation to generate movement for choreography 
• Students demonstrate understanding of structures or forms (such as palindrome, theme and variation, rondo, round, contemporary forms selected by the student) through brief dance studies 
• Students choreograph a duet demonstrating an understanding of choreographic principles, processes, and structures 

• Students demonstrate further development and refinement of the proficient skills to create a small group dance with coherence and aesthetic unity 
• Students accurately describe how a choreographer manipulated and developed the basic movement content in a dance 

Achievement Standard, Proficient:

• Students formulate and answer questions about how movement choices communicate abstract ideas in dance 
• Students demonstrate understanding of how personal experience influences the interpretation of a dance 
• Students create a dance that effectively communicates a contemporary social themes

• Students examine ways that a dance creates and conveys meaning by considering the dance from a variety of perspectives 
• Students compare and contrast how meaning is communicated in two of their own choreographic works 
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• Students create a dance and revise it over time, articulating the reasons for their artistic decisions and what was lost and gained by those decisions 
• Students establish a set of aesthetic criteria and apply it in evaluating their own work and that of others 
• Students formulate and answer their own aesthetic questions (such as, What is it that makes a particular dance that dance? How much can one change that dance before it becomes a different dance?) 

• Students discuss how skills developed in dance are applicable to a variety of careers 
• Students analyze the style of a choreographer or cultural form; then create a dance in that style (choreographers that could be analyzed include George Balanchine, Alvin Ailey, Laura Dean; cultural forms include bharata natyam, classical ballet) 
• Students analyze issues of ethnicity, gender, social/economic class, age and/or physical condition in relation to dance 

• Students perform and describe similarities and differences between two contemporary theatrical forms of dance 
• Students perform or discuss the traditions and technique of a classical dance form (e.g., Balinese, ballet) 
• Students create and answer twenty-five questions about dance and dancers prior to the twentieth century 
• Students analyze how dance and dancers are portrayed in contemporary media 

• Students create a time line illustrating important dance events in the twentieth century, placing them in their social/historical/cultural/political contexts 
• Students compare and contrast the role and significance of dance in two different social/historical/ cultural/political contexts 

• Students reflect upon their own progress and personal growth during their study of dance 
• Students effectively communicate how lifestyle choices affect the dancer 
• Students analyze historical and cultural images of the body in dance and compare these to images of the body in contemporary media 

• Students discuss challenges facing professional performers in maintaining healthy lifestyles 

• Students create an interdisciplinary project based on a theme identified by the student, including dance and two other disciplines 
• Students clearly identify commonalities and differences between dance and other disciplines with regard to fundamental concepts such as materials, elements, and ways of communicating meaning 
• Students demonstrate/discuss how technology can be used to reinforce, enhance, or alter the dance idea in an interdisciplinary project 

• Students compare one choreographic work to one other artwork from the same culture and time period in terms of how those works reflect the artistic/cultural/historical context 
• Students create an interdisciplinary project using media technologies (such as video, computer) that presents dance in a new or enhanced form (such as video dance, video/computer-aided live performance, or animation)