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EDUCATION 4884

SPECIAL TOPICS: SECONDARY DANCE EDUCATION

Spring Semester, 1990

Instructor:

Ruth Emerson

Wednesdays, 4:30-8:20 p.m.

Phone:

291-3395

Location: MPX 7540 (Gym)

PREREQUISITES

Educ. 401/402 or equivalent or permission of instructor.

Dance experience, though welcome, is not essential.

COURSE DESCRIPTION

This course, a secondary level continuation of EDUC. 495-4, looks at dance as a

performing art with links to physical education and to the fine arts; theatre, music,

and visual art. In this experiential class students will move together through the

doing, making, and seeing activities from which dance lessons are made. Laban

movement principles of body, effort, shape, space, and relationship will be studied

in terms of understanding how to teach the performance, choreography, and

aesthetic aspects of dance. Rather than being specifically dance technique based,

movement in the course will also incorporate general human activity as a non-

verbal movement language. Students will develop their own lessons and units of

dance.

COURSE REQUIREMENTS

class attendance and participation

50%

writing and speaking: including the final

written project; a unit of dance, planned and

presented orally to the class.

50%

REQUIRED TEXT

A xerox packet, to be purchased from the instructor.

ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR

Ruth Emerson was an original member of the Judson Dance Theatre in New York,

and a member of the Pearl Lang Dance Company. Ms. Emerson has a Master of

Arts in Dance from the University of Illinois, and she is a Certified Laban

Movement Analyst. In recent years, she has been teaching dance, choreographing,

developing intermediate and secondary arts programs, and directing her own

dance company. In 1988 and 1989 she took the S.F.U. Off-Centre Dance Company

on tour through B.C. schools. She is presently an adjunct professor in the S.F.U.

Dept. of Education.