Creative, expressive dance allows participants to explore movements to express ideas, thoughts and feelings and develop movement capabilities. Physical education teacher education (PETE) students often have limited experience of this dance form and may find that there is nothing to practice and learn and that creative dance is just directionless movements. In physical education (PE), if dance is included in the curriculum, it is mainly through social dancing, aerobic or other training forms to music. A very teacher-centered teaching with pre-determined movements and pre-defined meanings. Creative or expressive dance may give students the possibility to move beyond pre-given movements and explore their movements. This means that the PETE students need guidance in this dance form to understand its value and to feel confident to use creative dance in their future profession.
This practical workshop is based on a Swedish study conducted in the context of teaching Movement and Dance in PETE and a continuing professional development (CPD) course for physical education teachers focusing on practicing movements in creative dance. The purpose of the article was to explore the knowledge in movement that PETE students were practising as they participated in creative dance and also to shed light on what pedagogical practice contributed to enabling such practising. We see the purpose of this workshop as a proposal for how the learning objects in creative dance can be clarified and formulated. In the workshop, we will present some of the tasks and exercises described in the article and use bodily experience as a starting point for reflection and discussion.
The aim is to guide the participants through some dance exercises to explore movement capabilities, work with tools for composition and choreography. Also, to initiate reflections and discussions about our own experience and the main objective of what we offer students to learn when using creative dance in the PETE and PE.