Introduces you to a selection of all-time favorite ballroom and Latin dances, explains their steps, and gives guidance on the ideal music to choose as your dance soundtrack.

As dance training evolves and becomes more complex, knowledge of motor behavior is foundational in helping dancers learn and master new skills and become more efficient in integrating the skills. Motor Learning and Control for Dance is the first resource to address motor learning theory from a dance perspective. Educators and students preparing to teach will learn practical ways to connect the science behind dance to pedagogy in order to prepare dancers for performance. Dancers interested in performance from the recreational to professional levels will learn ways to enhance their technical and artistic progress. In language accessible even to those with no science background, Motor Learning and Control for Dance showcases principles and practices for students, artists, and teachers. The text offers a perspective on movement education not found in traditional dance training while adding to a palette of tools and strategies for improving dance instruction and performance. Aspiring dancers and instructors will explore how to develop motor skills, how to control movement on all levels, and—most important—how motor skills are best taught and learned. The authors, noted experts on motor learning and motor control in the dance world, explore these features that appeal to students and instructors alike: • Dance-specific photos, examples, and figures illustrate how to solve common problems various dance genres. • The 16 chapters prepare dance educators to teach dancers of all ages and abilities and support the development of dance artists and students in training and performance. • An extensive bibliography of sports and dance science literature allows teachers and performers to do their own research. • A glossary with a list of key terms at the back of the book. Part I presents an overview of motor behavior, covering motor development from birth to early adulthood. It provides the essential information for teaching posture control and balance, the locomotor skills underlying a range of complex dance skills, and the ballistic skills that are difficult to teach and learn, such as grand battement and movements in street dance. Part II explores motor control and how movement is planned, initiated, and executed. Readers will learn how the nervous system organizes the coordination of movement, the effects of anxiety and states of arousal on dance performance, how to integrate the senses into movement, and how speed and accuracy interact. Part III investigates methods of motor learning for dancers of all ages. Readers will explore how to implement a variety of instructional strategies, determine the best approaches for learning dance skills, and motivate and inspire dancers. This section also discusses how various methods of practice can help or hinder dancers, strategies for improving the recall of dance skills and sequences, and how to embrace somatic practice and its contribution to understanding imagery and motor learning. Motor Learning and Control for Dance addresses many related topics that are important to the discipline, such as imagery and improvisation. This book will help performers and teachers blend science with pedagogy to meet the challenge of artistry and technique in preparing for dance performance.

Dancing to Learn: Cognition, Emotion, and Movement explores the rationale for dance as a medium of learning to help engage educators and scientists to explore the underpinnings of dance, and dancers as well as members of the general public who are curious about new ways of comprehending dance. Among policy-makers, teachers, and parents, there is a heightened concern for successful pedagogical strategies. They want to know what can work with learners. This book approaches the subject of learning in, about, and through dance by triangulating knowledge from the arts and humanities, social and behavioral sciences, and cognitive and neurological sciences to challenge dismissive views of the cognitive importance of the physical dance. Insights come from theories and research findings in aesthetics, anthropology, cognitive science, dance, education, feminist theory, linguistics, neuroscience, phenomenology, psychology, and sociology. Using a single theory puts blinders on to other ways of description and analysis. Of course, all knowledge is tentative. Experiments necessarily must focus on a narrow topic and often use a special demographic—university students, and we don’t know the representativeness of case studies.

The lesson plans in Interdisciplinary Learning Through Dance: 101 MOVEntures are broad (covering six disciplines) and deep (101 plans in all). Each lesson is based on national standards and has been field tested with students in grades K-5 with positive results. In fact, both teachers and students enjoy the plans and the learning gained through Interdisciplinary Learning Through Dance: 101 MOVEntures. Teachers value the materials: a book, a music CD to be used with selected lessons, and a 60-minute DVD that demonstrates teaching methodologies and shows selected lesson plans in action. All are designed to be used in lessons that focus on science, social studies, language arts, math, physical education, and creative arts. Students respond with enthusiasm to the active learning of subjects through playful movement. The book's content inspires engaging and active learning with these features: - Basic language of dance - How-tos of lesson planning - Classroom-management techniques - Thinking tools for promoting conceptual understanding - Assessment choices and forms Each lesson plan addresses the national standards for dance and the core curriculum subject areas, as well as the grade level, length, student objectives, and materials needed. In addition, each plan contains these special features: - Introduction - Moving adventure - Assessment - Extensions The book explores the benefits of crossing curricular boundaries with dance and delves into the vocabulary of dance and the pedagogy for creating moving adventures, or MOVEntures. It lays out the 101 lesson plans in six disciplines, providing assessment tools, lesson schematics, and additional resources- including the national standards and thinking tools. Complete. Cross-disciplinary. Broad and deep. Instructive. And fun. Teachers can't go wrong with Interdisciplinary Learning Through Dance: 101 MOVEntures, because the students learn the subjects and come back wanting to learn more.