At St. James, our dance program is comprised of three strands:
- Creative Movement and Kinesthetic Expression
- Academic Curriculum Integration
- Choreography Development, Memorization and Performance
...ALSO KNOWN AS THE THREE "C"s!
CREATIVE MOVEMENT CURRICULUM INTEGRATION CHOREOGRAPHY
CREATIVE MOVEMENT CURRICULUM INTEGRATION CHOREOGRAPHY
- CREATIVE MOVEMENT means developing a dynamic range of ways to use the body to explore and express different kinds of energy. At SJSLA, we use the Visual and Performing Arts Standards as guiding principles to help structure our creative movement lessons. Visit the Resources page for more information!
- CURRICULUM INTEGRATION means using dance and other creative arts to teach aspects of the academic curriculum from other disciplines, like science, math, language arts and social studies. We collaborate with teachers from all grade levels to identify areas that might benefit from creative instruction, and weave them into our dance classes. Visit the Resources page for more information!
- CHOREOGRAPHY is one of the most important aspects of dance - and one of the most fun! Although our program is highly-process oriented, we also believe that presenting the final product of a collective creative endeavor in front of one's community is a wonderful way to celebrate our hard work and be witnessed in our artistry. We draw from a range of technical dance vocabularies - from ballet to hip-hop, salsa and samba to modern and jazz - to abstract and structure our work in a way that is sure to delight both performer and audience!
At St. James, our dance program also begins with three "deals":
- Keep your own body safe. Try not to be silly by pretending to fall - it can be tempting to be silly, but if you injure yourself now, you'll miss out on all of the fun things we'll be doing in the weeks to come!
- Keep other bodies safe. This means not touching other people's bodies, unless we are playing a movement game in which Ms. Laurel specifically asks you to make contact with another person.
- Listen! Ms. Laurel gives a lot of instructions in order to keep us safe and make sure we can have the most fun possible in our short time together. So, when she is speaking, make sure you aren't! If you have something to say, or a question to ask, you can always raise your hand.