Dance

Dance by Division

Lower School

Lower School Dance is a creative movement-based program that is designed to encourage body and spatial awareness and to strengthen the students sense of self. This is achieved by guiding the students through integrated movement explorations.

Collaborative projects are an essential component of the dance curriculum, providing students with opportunities to develop the language of dance, express ideas, problem solve and create original choreography. The dance curriculum integrates with both homeroom and other disciplines to deepen a student’s overall academic experience.

Middle School

The Middle School Dance curriculum focuses on technique, performance skills, and choreography. Proper alignment, consistent energy, musicality, confidence and expressiveness are emphasized in each class. Classes begin with a warm-up of stretches, yoga poses, pliés, balances and small jumps, followed by longer dances that include quick entrances and exits, chassés, jumps, leaps and turns. Creative work is central to the curriculum.

Choreography projects explore a wide range of topics, many of which are aligned with the academic curriculum. Recent topics have included the Louisiana Purchase and decoding messages through dance, as well as exploring poetry through movement. Through these projects, students learn how to explore ideas through movement, how to structure a dance, how to create movement phrases, and how to use elements such as level, dynamics, speed, theme and variation and stillness effectively. Frequent in-class presentations of student choreography provide opportunities for detailed discussions, which help students revise their work. Additional performance opportunities include our Winter Concert, which features music and dance, the Middle School Musical (Classes 6 and 7), and our Middle School Dance Club.

Upper School

The Upper School Dance curriculum offers specialized courses building on the strong foundation established through the Lower and Middle School curricula. Students often engage in interdisciplinary work and collaborative work in Upper School dance classes. These collaborative projects require students to extensively brainstorm, find common ground with one another and synthesize ideas to solve problems. Creative risk taking is strongly encouraged as is the notion that there are many different ways to solve the same problem.

The InterArts Dance curriculum in Classes 8 and 9 puts a heavy emphasis on choreography and composition. Students in Class 9 also explore the history and technique of American jazz dance. More specialized elective, or FOCUS, courses are available to students in Classes 10-12 allow for a deeper investigation of dance in its many forms including ballet, modern, jazz, yoga, musical theater, Pilates, improvisation, dance composition and dance on film. Many of our students also participate in the Upper School Dance Club, which requires a strong student commitment to crafting composition, casting and directing rehearsals and honing performance skills.

FOCUS Courses

Anatomy: Examining the Mechanics of Everyday Movement
Dance Ensemble
Dance Technique