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. 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: 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: 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 retain and execute dance choreography. b. Develop a plan for healthful practices in dance activities and everyday life including nutrition and injury prevention. Discuss implementation of the plan and how it supports personal performance goals. c. Collaborate with peers to establish and implement a rehearsal plan to meet performance goals. Use a variety of strategies to analyze and evaluate performances of self and others (e.g., use video recordings of practice to analyze the difference between the way movements look and how they feel to match performance with visual affect). Articulate performance goals and justify reasons for selecting particular practice strategies.

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. Refine technical dance skills to improve performance. Dance with sensibility toward and with other dancers while executing complex spatial, rhythmic and dynamic sequences to meet performance goals. b. Apply anatomical principles and healthful practices to a range of technical dance skills for achieving fluency of movement. Follow a personal nutrition plan that supports health for everyday life. c. Plan and execute collaborative and independent practice and rehearsal processes with attention to technique and artistry informed by personal performance goals. Reflect on personal achievements.

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. Apply mind-body principles to technical dance skills in complex choreography when performing solo, partnering, or dancing in ensemble works in a variety of dance genres and styles. Self-evaluate performances and discuss and analyze performance ability with others. b. Research healthful and safe practices for dancers and modify personal practice based on findings. Discuss how research informs practice. c. Initiate, plan, and direct rehearsals with attention to technical details and fulfilling artistic expression. Use a range of rehearsal strategies to achieve performance excellence.

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. Analyze a dance to determine the ideas expressed by the choreographer. Explain how the perspectives expressed by the choreographer may impact one’s own interpretation. Provide evidence to support one’s analysis. b. Collaboratively identify a dance related question or problem. Conduct research through interview, research database, text, media, or movement. Analyze and apply information gathered by creating a group dance that answers the question posed. Discuss how the dance communicates new perspectives or realizations. Compare orally and in writing the process used in choreography to that of other creative, academic, or scientific procedures.

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. Analyze a dance that is related to content learned in other subjects and research its context. Synthesize information learned and share new ideas about its impact on one’s perspective. b. Use established research methods and techniques to investigate a topic. Collaborate with others to identify questions and solve movement problems that pertain to the topic. Create and perform a piece of choreography on this topic. Discuss orally or in writing the insights relating to knowledge gained through the research process, the synergy of collaboration, and the transfer of learning from this project to other learning situations.