Dance expresses experience and also affects experience, creating feelings and responses in the viewer. As well as creating their own dances, students will view and react to dances experienced as audience, supporting their own opinions. This unit provides an opportunity for students to explore individual and cultural world views expressed within dances and to become more familiar with dancers and choreographers from Saskatchewan, Canada and elsewhere. By developing their own ability to express themselves through dance and by becoming more aware of how dance affects them, students will begin to understand and value dance expressions, not merely as a form of entertainment but as something that can be a significant part of peoples' daily lives. This unit focuses on the role of dance in various cultures, time periods and in the students' own homes and communities.
Emphasis is on how dance both reflects and affects societies.
Discuss how social dance styles change. Ask the students to speculate on why they think some new dances become popular, while others don't catch on. Reference books, films, videos, magazines on social dances of the past Ask the students about social dance functions they attend. Do they attend wedding dances, student dances, etc. Have the students examine and research the social dances of a specific era such as the 1920s, 1960s, etc.