Search the California Content Standards

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):
Use artistic criteria to determine what makes an effective performance. Consider content, context, genre, style, or cultural movement practice to comprehend artistic expression. Use genre-specific dance terminology.

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. Embody technical dance skills (e.g., functional alignment, coordination, balance, core support, clarity of movement, weight shifts, flexibility/range of motion) to replicate, recall, and execute spatial designs and musical or rhythmical dance phrases. b. Evaluate personal healthful practices in dance activities and everyday life including nutrition and injury prevention. Discuss choices made, the effects experienced, and methods for improvement. c. Collaborate with peers to discover strategies for achieving performance accuracy, clarity, and expressiveness. Articulate personal performance goals and practice to reach goals. Document personal improvement over time (e.g., journaling, portfolio, or timeline).

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. Sculpt the body in space and design body shapes in relation to other dancers, objects, and environment. Use focus during complex floor and air patterns and/or pathways. b. Analyze and select metric, kinetic, and breath phrasing and apply appropriately to dance phrases. Perform dance phrases of different lengths that use various timings within the same section. Use different tempi in different body parts at the same time. c. Direct energy and dynamics in such a way that movement is textured. Incorporate energy and dynamics to technique exercises and dance performance. Use energy and dynamics to enhance and project movements.

Enduring Understanding: The elements of dance, dance structures, and choreographic devices serve as both a foundation and a departure point for choreographers.
Essential Question(s): What influences choice-making in creating choreography?
Process Component(s): Plan

Performance Standard(s):
a. Collaborate to select and apply a variety of choreographic devices and dance structures to choreograph an original dance study or dance with a clear artistic intent. Articulate the group process for making movement and structural choices. b. Define and apply artistic criteria to choreograph a dance that communicates personal or cultural meaning. Discuss how the criteria clarify or intensify the meaning of the dance.

Enduring Understanding: The elements of dance, dance structures, and choreographic devices serve as both a foundation and a departure point for choreographers.
Essential Question(s): What influences choice-making in creating choreography?
Process Component(s): Plan

Performance Standard(s):
a. Collaborate to design a dance using choreographic devices and dance structures to support an artistic intent. Explain how the dance structures clarify the artistic intent. b. Develop an artistic statement for an original dance study or dance. Discuss how the use of movement elements, choreographic devices and dance structures serve to communicate the artistic statement.

Enduring Understanding: The elements of dance, dance structures, and choreographic devices serve as both a foundation and a departure point for choreographers.
Essential Question(s): What influences choice-making in creating choreography?
Process Component(s): Plan

Performance Standard(s):
a. Work individually and collaboratively to design and implement a variety of choreographic devices and dance structures to develop original dances. Analyze how the structure and final composition informs the artistic intent. b. Develop an artistic statement that reflects a personal aesthetic for an original dance study or dance. Select and demonstrate movements that support the artistic statement.

Enduring Understanding: The elements of dance, dance structures, and choreographic devices serve as both a foundation and a departure point for choreographers.
Essential Question(s): What influences choice-making in creating choreography?
Process Component(s): Plan

Performance Standard(s):
a. Demonstrate fluency and personal voice in designing and choreographing original dances. Justify choreographic choices and explain how they are used to intensify artistic intent. b. Craft an artistic statement that communicates a personal, aesthetic, cultural, and artistic perspective in a collection of original work.

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. Develop partner and ensemble skills that enable contrast while maintaining a sense of spatial design and relationship (e.g., through lifts, balance, or other means). Use space intentionally during phrases and through transitions between phrases. Establish and break relationships with others as appropriate to the choreography. b. Use syncopation and accent movements related to different tempi. Take rhythmic cues from different aspects of accompaniment. Integrate breath phrasing with metric and kinesthetic phrasing. c. Connect energy and dynamics to movements by applying them in and through all parts of the body. Develop total body awareness so that movement phrases demonstrate variances of energy and dynamics.

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. Dance alone and with others with spatial intention. Expand partner and ensemble skills to greater ranges and skill level. Execute complex floor and air sequences with others while maintaining and breaking relationships through focus and intentionality. b. Perform dance studies and compositions that use time and tempo in unpredictable ways. Use internal rhythms and kinetics as phrasing tools. c. Initiate movement phrases by applying energy and dynamics. Vary energy and dynamics over the length of a phrase. Transition smoothly out of one phrase and into the next phrase, paying close attention to its movement initiation and energy.

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. Modulate and use the broadest range of movement in space for artistic and expressive clarity. Use inward and outward focus to clarify movement and intent. Establish and break relationships with other dancers and audience as appropriate to the dance. b. Modulate time factors for artistic interest and expressive acuity. Demonstrate time complexity in phrasing with and without musical accompaniment. Use multiple and complex rhythms (e.g., contrapuntal and/or polyrhythmic) at the same time. Work with and against rhythm of accompaniment or sound environments. c. Modulate dynamics to clearly express intent while performing dance phrases and choreography. Perform movement sequences expressively using a broad dynamic range and employ dynamic skills to establish and maintain relationships with other dancers and project to the audience.