Search the California Content Standards

Enduring Understanding: Dancers use the mind-body connection and develop the body as an instrument for artistry and artistic expression.
Essential Question(s): What must a dancer do to prepare the mind and body for artistic expression?
Process Component(s): Embody

Performance Standard(s):
a. Demonstrate a range of locomotor and non-locomotor movements, body patterning, and dance sequences that require moving through space using a variety of pathways. b. Move safely in a variety of spatial relationships and formations with other dancers, sharing and maintaining personal space. c. Repeat movements, with an awareness of self and others in space. Self-adjust and modify movements or placement upon request.

Enduring Understanding: Space, time, and energy are basic elements of dance.
Essential Question(s): How do dancers work with space, time and energy to communicate artistic expression?
Process Component(s): Express

Performance Standard(s):
a. Demonstrate clear directionality and intent when performing locomotor and non-locomotor movements that change body shapes, facings, and pathways in space. Identify symmetrical and asymmetrical body shapes and examine relationships between body parts. b. Identify the length of time a movement or phrase takes (e.g., whether it is long or short). Identify and move on the downbeat in duple and triple meter. Correlate metric phrasing with movement phrasing. c. Select and apply appropriate characteristics to movements (e.g., selecting specific adverbs and adjectives and apply them to movements). Demonstrate kinesthetic awareness while dancing the movement characteristics.

Enduring Understanding: Space, time, and energy are basic elements of dance.
Essential Question(s): How do dancers work with space, time and energy to communicate artistic expression?
Process Component(s): Express

Performance Standard(s):
a. Judge spaces as distance traveled and use space three dimensionally Demonstrate shapes with positive and negative space. Perform movement sequences in and through space with intentionality and focus. b. Fulfill specified duration of time with improvised locomotor and non-locomotor movements. Differentiate between “in time” and “out of time” to music. Perform movements that are the same or of a different time orientation to accompaniment. Use metric and kinesthetic phrasing. c. Change use of energy and dynamics by modifying movements and applying specific characteristics to heighten the effect of their intent.

Enduring Understanding: Dancers use the mind-body connection and develop the body as an instrument for artistry and artistic expression.
Essential Question(s): What must a dancer do to prepare the mind and body for artistic expression?
Process Component(s): Embody

Performance Standard(s):
a. Replicate body shapes, movement characteristics, and movement patterns in a dance sequence with awareness of body alignment and core support. b. Adjust body-use to coordinate with a partner or other dancers to safely change levels, directions, and pathway designs. c. Recall movement sequences with a partner or in group dance activities. Apply constructive feedback from teacher and self-check to improve dance skills.

Enduring Understanding: Dance performance is an interaction between performer, production elements, and audience that heightens and amplifies artistic expression.
Essential Question(s): How does a dancer heighten artistry in a public performance?
Process Component(s): Present

Performance Standard(s):
a. Identify the main areas of a performance space using production terminology (e.g., stage right, stage left, center stage, upstage, and downstage). b. Explore production elements for a dance performed for an audience in a designated specific performance space.

Enduring Understanding: Dance is perceived and analyzed to comprehend its meaning.
Essential Question(s): How is a dance understood?
Process Component(s): Analyze

Performance Standard(s):
a. Find a movement pattern that creates a movement phrase in a dance work. b. Demonstrate and explain how one dance genre is similar to and different from another, or how one cultural movement practice is similar to and different from another.

Enduring Understanding: Dance is interpreted by considering intent, meaning, and artistic expression as communicated through the use of the body, elements of dance, dance technique, dance structure, and context.
Essential Question(s): How is dance interpreted?
Process Component(s): Interpret

Performance Standard(s):
Select specific context cues from movement. Explain how they relate to the main idea of the dance using basic dance terminology.

Enduring Understanding: Criteria for evaluating dance vary across genres, styles, and cultures
Essential Question(s): What criteria are used to evaluate dance?
Process Component(s): Critique

Performance Standard(s):
Select dance movements from specific genres, styles, or cultures. Identify characteristic movements from these dances and describe in basic dance terminology ways in which they are similar and different.

Enduring Understanding: As dance is experienced, all personal experiences, knowledge, and contexts are integrated and synthesized to interpret meaning.
Essential Question(s): How does dance deepen our understanding of ourselves, other knowledge, and events around us?
Process Component(s): Synthesize

Performance Standard(s):
a. Compare the relationships expressed in a dance to relationships with others. Explain how they are the same or different. b. Ask and research a question about a key aspect of a dance that communicates a perspective about an issue or event. Explore the key aspect through movement. Share movements and describe how the movements help to remember or discover new qualities in these key aspects.

Enduring Understanding: Dance literacy includes deep knowledge and perspectives about societal, cultural, historical, and community contexts.
Essential Question(s): How does knowing about societal, cultural, historical and community experiences expand dance literacy?
Process Component(s): Relate

Performance Standard(s):
Find a relationship between movement in a dance from a culture, society, or community and the culture from which the dance is derived. Explain what the movements communicate about key aspects of the culture, society, or community.