Perspectives on an Expansive Postsecondary Dance

Abstract

Building on Doug Risner's recent call toward re-visioning postsecondary dance,1 this article explores and challenges traditional attitudes that have defined and contained dance in education and suggests a more inclusive, expansive vision: one that considers present challenges and realities while projecting forward to what current and future dance graduates will face in their individual journeys within the discipline. In the process of identifying what is relevant for our future, this article touches on three foundational challenges and opportunities within the dance discipline: (1) globalization and multiculturalism, with implications for dance education; (2) long-standing divisions between performing artists and educators; and (3) philosophical and practice-based conflicts between “educational” and “studio” dance. Within each challenge and opportunity this article offers alternate paradigms, which, if considered, move us toward a more expansive view of postsecondary dance. In so doing, we begin to identify possibilities for transforming dance in education.