Реферат: Dance Education Essay Research Paper Dance EducationOutline

our relationships (Page 3). If we are to rebuild our culture we must begin with the basics (Walsh 5).

Dance floor etiquette can easily be incorporated into a ballroom dance class. Paul Lanoureaux, a dance

instructor by night and a middle school principal by day has been teaching dancing and etiquette to 11 and

12-year-old children in the Boston area for five years. He gives instruction three nights a week but because of high

demand he could fill these classes every night of the week.

The curriculum for the six-week session includes ballroom dances like the foxtrot and polkas. They teach students

to use phrases like “may I have this dance?” and respond with “I’d be delighted.” The boys seem to appreciate

the rules of the class. The young women quietly worry about having to dance with ” a geek.” They are all

expected to dress in their best attire for most of the classes in the session.

According to Catherine Walsh:

This is what our society needs: to teach children manners and social skills and to require them to

dress appropriately. In a culture in which both parents work and one-parent families are more common than

ever, where there are few cultural norms and expectations, someone has to teach the children how to

make conversation. Pundits too often lament the lack of civility and manners in our society, without noting

that they often neglect the teaching of these traits in our culture. Children are more self-assured when they know

that dancing is a fun and no pressure way for them to meet and interact with the opposite sex (5).

Dance may help people by decreasing isolation, loneliness and boredom. Asking a woman to dance is the perfect

icebreaker in many social events. Dancing may also increase tactile support, cooperation and enjoyment while

giving participants something to do with their hands, feet and bodies when communication on a purely verbal

level is awkward (Crenan 50).

Katrina Hazzard-Gordon, chairperson of the Sociology department at Rutgers University has written extensively

about the connection between developing values and dances’ cultural significance. She teaches a combination of

sociology and dance where one day a week she lectures and the other is spent in the studio. She explains that

sociology is the study of human behavior; dance is “rhythmically organized” human behavior (A5).

Connection may be the essential social impact dance has on people. Julianna Flinn describes this connection in a

religious sense, calling it the “flow experience,” that relates to American country dance as a transcendental

awakening or a way of encountering something beyond the ordinary, conscious individual self. This makes it

something akin to a religious experience by subsuming people, connecting them to something elemental. By

focusing on music and movement all other concerns become absent and the complexity of the dance reduces