Teaching Dance As If The World Matters

Ali East (MPhEd) lectures in Dance Studies (University of Otago, NZ), teaching choreography, somatics and ethnography. In 1989 she established New Zealand s first contemporary choreography qualification which spawned a new generation of NZ dance artists. Research: eco-dance pedagogy, Trans-locational Dance Education and trans-disciplinary research.

This book presents a rationale for ecologically based dance education. In broad terms, it is an investigation of the ways by which we may use our teaching and choreography to enhance our relations, with ourselves, each other and the world or, in other words, exploring ways whereby, we may let the world into our [teaching] method (Grumet 1990). An auto-ethnographic narrative is used to interweave the author s ideas, philosophies and past experiences as a choreographer and teacher with recognised writers and thinkers from across the domains of dance, ecology, environmentalism, eco-psychology, art and aesthetics and education. From these inter-weavings the threads (principles and framework) of an eco-choreography pedagogy have been teased.The resulting study is not so much an analysis but a synthesis of many ideas woven together as three metaphorical baskets (Kete) of Knowledge. It is the author s hope that each teacher of dance or its related arts will find within the ideas laid out, the encouragement to develop their own individualised eco-dance pedagogy.