Re-envisioning dance technique pedagogy

This pedagogical practice-based research flows from the dance studio. It explores experiences of learning dance technique with groups of undergraduate and postgraduate students at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance. The study is contextually located within the multifaceted discourses of higher education, conservatoire training and contemporary dance techniques. Central to this is the experiences of learners which are considered through three overlapping and concomitant dimensions: engagement with movement materials, relationship with the teacher and the influence of peers.
Critical feminist pedagogy provides an overarching theoretical frame through which to critically reflect upon the pedagogical values underpinning transformative learning and educational empowerment as they are experienced in practice. A feminist interpretive ethnographic approach has been employed enabling an inductive process that prioritises subjective and embodied knowing. In this way, the dance technique class is posited as a situated cultural site wherein the teacher/researcher is co-participant.
Through the unfolding discussion, a re-envisioning of dance technique pedagogy is developed. Its polymorphic potentialities are explored through the pedagogical priorities of active learning, shared responsibility and interdependent relationships. Thus, learning among students, teacher and peers is reconceptualised thematically, as explorative, comfort(able) and collective. Arising from the research findings, in-depth and intimate insights of dance technique pedagogy are revealed in their richly layered and multidimensional complexity.