Dance as an Interdisciplinary Tool
Because dance is language-like, it is a medium for interdisciplinary education. It facilitates learning by promoting creativity and by giving concrete, moving expression to abstract concepts. Before earning a Ph.D. in anthropology from Columbia University, I was a school teacher in Los Angeles, certified by the state of California to teach high school social studies and English. In 1972 -- with this background, as well as my dance training and experience in teaching dance --- I offered a dance-centered course for Gill/St. Bernard's High School in Bernardsville, New Jersey. I saw firsthand how the language of dance could be a point of entry into academic subjects. Students learned different dances and then researched their culture and history. English skills were developed when students wrote critiques of the dance concerts they saw at Lincoln Center and then compared their critiques with what critic Clive Barnes wrote in The New York Times the next day.