Dance Education and Responsible Citizenship: Promoting Civic Engagement through Effective Dance Pedagogies [1 ed.] 0367248700, 9780367248703

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Dance Education and Responsible Citizenship

Originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Dance Education, this collection brings together a number of insightful chapters which explore themes relating to responsible citizenship within dance education. Presenting research, scholarship, experiences, and pedagogical approaches from national and international contexts, and diverse educational settings, the chapters included in this book demonstrate how the study of dance requires students to develop a clear sense of self-​and group-​responsibility. Including high-​level contributions from a range of researchers, educators, and dance instructors, the volume investigates how research and instruction can contribute to building communities; and ensure that dance education reacts to shifting social, political, and cultural norms. Responsible citizenship and civic engagement are examined in relation to course content, pedagogical approaches, systemic practices, and cultural assumptions. This valuable collection of diverse and insightful chapters will be of great interest to researchers, post-​graduate academics, and teachers and instructors in the fields of dance and teacher education. Karen Schupp is the Assistant Director of Dance and Associate Professor in the School of Film, Dance and Theatre at Arizona State University, U.S.A.

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Dance Education and Responsible Citizenship Promoting Civic Engagement through Effective Dance Pedagogies Edited by Karen Schupp

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First published 2019 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 Taylor & Francis The right of Karen Schupp to be identified as editor of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data Names: Schupp, Karen, editor. Title: Dance education and responsible citizenship : promoting civic engagement through effective dance pedagogies / [edited] by Karen Schupp. Description: New York : Routledge, 2019. | Audience: “Originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Dance Education, this collection brings together a number of insightful chapters which explore themes relating to responsible citizenship within dance education. Presenting research, scholarship, experiences and pedagogical approaches from national and international contexts, and diverse educational settings, the articles included in this book demonstrate how the study of dance requires students to develop a clear sense of self- and group-responsibility. Including high-level contributions from a range of researchers, educators and dance instructors, the volume investigates how research and instruction can contribute to building communities; and ensure that dance education reacts to shifting social, political, and cultural norms. Responsible citizenship and civic engagement are examined in relation to course content, pedagogical approaches, systemic practices, and cultural assumptions. This valuable collection of diverse and insightful chapters will be of great interest to researchers, post-graduate academics, teachers and instructors in the fields of dance and teacher education”– | Includes bibliographic references. Identifiers: LCCN 2019013325 | ISBN 9780367248703 (hbk.) | ISBN 9780429284809 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Dance–Study and teaching–Social aspects. | Culturally relevant pedagogy. | Social justice and education. | Civics. | Service learning. Classification: LCC GV1589 .D365 2019 | DDC 792.807–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019013325 ISBN: 978-​0-​367-​24870-​3  (hbk) ISBN: 978-​0-​429-​28480-​9  (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Newgen Publishing UK

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Contents

List of Contributors  Introduction – A Call to Action: Dance Education and Responsible Citizenship 

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K ARE N   S C H U P P

1 Arts Education and Citizenship: A Pedagogical Framework 

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I L ANA  MORG A N

2 Teaching African Dances as Civic Engagement: Pedagogic Perspectives of Teachers of African Dances in North America, Europe, New Zealand, and Asia 

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AL F DAN I E L S M A BI N G O

3 COLLABORATION: An Activity of Responsible Citizenship 

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J U L I E A.  MU LVI H I LL

4 Laying New Ground: Uprooting White Privilege and Planting Seeds of Equity and Inclusivity 

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C RYSTAL U.  DAV I S

5 Reframing Dance Appreciation and Dance History to Teach Social Responsibility  H AL E Y H OSS JA MESO N

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6 Comm(unity): Promoting Civic Engagement in a Modern Dance Performance Course 

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T RAC I   K L E I N

7 Circle of Love: A Message from Hip Hop 

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T E H ME K AH MAC PH ER SO N

Index 

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Note: Chapters 1–​7 in this book were originally published in Journal of Dance Education, volume 18, issue 3 (2018).

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Contributors

Crystal U. Davis is Assistant Professor of Dance at the University of Maryland, College Park. She teaches dance courses and facilitates training for dance educators. She obtained her B.A. in Comparative Religion from Emory University, M.F.A in Dance from Texas Woman’s University, M.A. in Performance Studies from New York University, and C.L.M.A. from Integrated Movement Studies. Her performance, choreographic and ethnographic research, conducted domestically and abroad, explores implicit bias and how privilege manifests in the body. Haley Hoss Jameson has taught dance for over 30  years in studios, workshops, and at the collegiate level. She has been faculty at Stephen F.  Austin State University, University of Missouri-​Kansas City’s Conservatory of Music and Dance, Missouri Valley College, Cottey College, and Northwest Missouri State University. Haley received her B.S.  in Theatre/​Dance from Kansas State University and her MFA in Dance and Related Arts from Texas Woman’s University. Traci Klein holds a B.F.A. in dance from Southern Methodist University and a M.F.A.  from NYU Tisch School of the Arts. She was a member of the Martha Graham Ensemble and CorbinDances, and has taught workshops and presented choreography internationally. From 2014–​2018 she was an Assistant Professor of Dance at Texas A&M International University and is a licensed yoga instructor. Research interests include dance pedagogy, the creative process, and female leadership in dance. Alfdaniels Mabingo is a dance scholar, researcher, and performer and drummer from Uganda, East Africa. A Fulbright alumni, he holds a Ph.D. in Dance Studies from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests encompass pedagogies of African dances, decolonization of dance pedagogies, and intercultural dance

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viii Contributors education. He has taught dance at Makerere University in Uganda, New York University in the U.S., Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts in Jamaica, and the University of Auckland in New Zealand. Tehmekah MacPherson (Dr. T) approaches dance as an energetic language. She offers Hip Hop and other Afro-​movement meditation practices that fuse indigenous spiritual insights with embodied symbolism to encourage interconnection, present moment appreciation, and balanced energy flow. Dr. T is founding director of the College Preparatory D.A.N.C.E camp and founding director of Dance Dimension Institute –​a non-​profit organization that offers innovative, engaging, and informative experiences with dance that promote rhythms of peace, love, and joy. Ilana Morgan is an Assistant Professor of Dance at Texas Woman’s University, where she coordinates the B.A. and M.A. in Dance Education. As a scholar, choreographer, and arts advocate she specializes in community engaged dance and choreographic practices serving youth in detention, seniors, and public and private schools. She has also published in the Journal of Dance Education and the Journal of Emerging Dance Scholarship. Julie A.  Mulvihill is a teaching artist with a Ph.D. in Dance Theory and Practice from Texas Woman’s University. Her research focus and practice is in dance making within groups. Julie has danced and shown work throughout the U.S., and presented workshops and papers at conferences all over the world. She holds a teaching certification in the Alexander Technique from CBAS. Julie has discovered all kinds of movement in all kinds of ways with all kinds of people. Karen Schupp M.F.A. is Associate Professor and Assistant Director of Dance in the Herberger Institute School of Film, Dance and Theatre at Arizona State University. Her research addresses innovative pedagogical practices and curricula in postsecondary dance education, dance competition culture, and social justice within dance education. Her research has been published in numerous academic journals and edited volumes. Schupp is the author Studying Dance: A Guide to Campus and Beyond and the Associate Editor of the Journal of Dance Education.

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Introduction A Call to Action: Dance Education and Responsible Citizenship Karen Schupp

In democracy, citizenship carries specific obligations and privileges, most notably the right to participate in decision making about governmental representation and policies, and the civic responsibility to better one’s community. Yet, not all citizens civically engage. Using the 2016 United States presidential election as an example, approximately 42 percent to 45 percent of the eligible electorate did not vote (Chalabi 2017; Regan 2016). As a result, “three in four U.S. adults didn’t check a box in November [2016] to say they approve of the [current U.S.] president” (Chalabi 2017, n.p.). Although participating in elections is but one way to participate in democracy, the low voter turnout in the previous example points to the need to increase responsible citizenship. The reasons for choosing not to civically engage are varied. Some might feel ill prepared to make informed decisions or take action, others are systemically disenfranchised, and still others are apathetic or uncertain of their own political values. At the root of these challenges lie issues related to individual and collective agency, respecting diversity and cultivating inclusivity, community building, fostering empathy, and recognizing how one’s personal values relate to larger cultural concerns. Collectively, these aptitudes are requisite for participating in democracy with a sense of accountability. Responsible citizens understand the communities in which they exist, work to improve their communities, act in ways that promote equity, recognize their own political values, and participate in democratic processes; they are informed and proactive. Numerous educational philosophies recognize the intersections of social justice and the acquisition and construction of knowledge. Critical pedagogy situates education as a means of emancipation by acknowledging that knowledge is subjective and that social justice issues are not separate from teaching and learning (Freire 2000). Stemming from the concept that education is not politically neutral, engaged pedagogy requires educators to respect and build on students’ lived experiences as a way to build knowledge so that students are holistically

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2  Karen Schupp educated (hooks 1994). Feminist pedagogical approaches foreground the inclusion of multiple voices and perspectives in the classroom as a way to encourage empathy (Webb, Allen, and Walker 2002), and transformative pedagogy authorizes students to investigate their values and perceptions to establish a “reflective knowledge base, an appreciation for multiple perspectives, and a sense of critical consciousness and agency” (Ukpokodu 2009). These approaches are directly tied to developing a sense of responsible citizenship in students. Although dance education on its own is not an “ultimate answer, a panacea to all of the world’s problems” (Green 2000, 63), dance educators can proactively contribute to educating students who are conscious of their civic responsibilities. Studying dance requires students to develop a clear sense of self-​responsibility and group responsibility; to contribute to building communities as they learn; to understand how dance and dance education react to shifting social, political, and cultural norms; and to cultivate a sense of informed inquiry and action. When these capacities are prioritized and revealed as essential to dance learning and teaching, the dance classroom, broadly defined, can become a place to strengthen the aptitudes of responsible citizenship. In this book, authors discuss themes related to responsible citizenship within dance education by sharing their research, scholarship, experiences, and pedagogical approaches. The chapters address responsible citizenship in national and international contexts and diverse educational settings. Responsible citizenship is examined in relation to course content, pedagogical approaches, systemic practices, and cultural assumptions. The edited volume begins with the chapter “Arts Education and Citizenship: A Pedagogical Framework.” In this chapter, Ilana Morgan outlines a curricular framework for addressing citizenship in today’s K–​12 dance classroom. This chapter presents pedagogical goals and approaches that promote connections among arts education, the cultivation of civic responsibility, and greater cultural understanding and empathy. Through contextualizing the framework in relation to current U.S. political events, the chapter offers an illustration of how arts education can be central to the evolution of social-​justice-​oriented citizenship, fostering meaningful lives for students, and contributing to a democratic society. Alfdaniels Mabingo’s chapter, “Teaching African Dances as Civic Engagement: Pedagogic Perspectives of Teachers of African Dances in North America, Europe, New Zealand, and Asia,” specifically examines how teachers of African dance forms use pedagogical strategies to advance civic understanding. Building on theories of transformative learning and acculturation, the research reveals how dance educators of African dance forms use various methods to educate and shift people’s

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Introduction 3 essentialist notions about Africans and Africa. In this way, dance educators are catalysts for increasing people’s understanding of diverse cultural experiences. Considering how collaboration in dance making can contribute to a pedagogy of responsible citizenship is the focus of Julie A.  Mulvihill’s chapter, “COLLABORATION: An Activity of Responsible Citizenship.” Mulvihill examines how rehearsal can be framed as a pedagogical space to explicitly teach students collaboration skills through a practice she terms Thinking Together. Through collectively navigating and problem solving while creating dances, students learn to disrupt long-​ held assumptions about power dynamics, to honor differences, and to create shared understandings. White privilege within dance education is analyzed in the chapter “Laying New Ground: Uprooting White Privilege and Planting Seeds of Equity and Inclusivity” by Crystal U. Davis. Drawing on critical race theory, the chapter examines how privileging Whiteness in dance education limits access and equity for students, teachers, and administrators. Davis delineates how White privilege can appear in pedagogical approaches, course content, assessment of learning, and administrative practices. The chapter offers examples and possible solutions of how to challenge White privilege to create more inclusive dance education spaces. The book also includes three practice-​based chapters, each presenting unique and practical methods for addressing responsible citizenship in dance courses. Haley Hoss Jameson’s chapter, “Reframing Dance Appreciation and Dance History to Teach Social Responsibility” situates college Dance Appreciation and Dance History courses as sites for teaching social responsibility. Through building a lens of inquiry based on identity categories that are often included as protected classes in nondiscrimination statements, students look at how dance relates to personal and social identity, and can be a means to voice political concerns and investigate the larger world. Traci Klein’s chapter, “Comm(unity): Promoting Civic Engagement in a Modern Dance Performance Course,” illustrates how civic engagement can be cultivated by pairing service-​based learning with rehearsing and performing modern dance. Klein proposes that prioritizing connections to students’ communities instead of solely focusing on technical and artistic mastery within a performance course permits students to better understand their roles, influence, and responsibilities as dance artists. The book closes with the chapter “Circle of Love: A Message from Hip Hop” by Tehmekah MacPherson. In this chapter, MacPherson demonstrates how the significance of love within hip hop culture can be positioned as a pedagogical approach when teaching hip hop dance.

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4  Karen Schupp Foregrounding the importance of humanity and love helps to contextualize the origins of hip hop while also elevating a sense of self-​love and community awareness in the hip hop dance classroom. As elucidated by the chapters in this volume, foregrounding the development of responsible citizens through dance education can provide ways to increase students’ awareness and respect for others, comfort in participating in democratic processes, and civic engagement in their communities. When dance education is approached with attention to responsible citizenship, dance artists, dance educators, and dance professionals can become situated as change makers inside and outside of the dance studio.

References Chalabi, Mona. 2017. “Who are the Three-​Quarters of Adult Americans Who Didn’t Vote for Trump?” The Guardian, July 14. www.theguardian.com/​us-​ news/​2017/​jan/​18/​american-​non-​voters-​election-​donald-​trump. Freire, Paulo. 2000. Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 30th Anniversary Edition. Translated by Myra Bergman Ramos. New York, NY: Continuum. Green, Jill. 2000. “Power, Service, and Reflexivity in a Community Dance Project.” Research in Dance Education 1 (1):53–​67. doi:10.1080/​14647890050006587. hooks, bell. 1994. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York, NY: Routledge. Regan, Michael D. 2016. “What Does Voter Turnout Tell Us About the 2016 Election?” PBS News Hour, November 20. www.pbs.org/​newshour/​politics/​ voter-​turnout-​2016-​elections. Upokodu, Omiuota. 2009. “The Practice of Transformative Pedagogy.” Journal of Excellence in College Teaching 20 (2):43–​69. Webb, Lynne M., Myria W. Allen, and Kandi L. Walker. 2002. “Feminist Pedagogy:  Identifying Basic Principles.” Academic Exchange Quarterly 6 (1):67–​72.

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1  Arts Education and Citizenship A Pedagogical Framework Ilana Morgan

Providing dance education for K–​12 students in the United States has involved growth and setbacks in funding and supportive ideology at the national, state, and community levels. The U.S. educational climate often views arts education as frivolous, requiring a continued conversation about the value of aesthetic arts education and its funding requirements. For example, when asked about his recent proposal to eliminate the $4  million annual state subsidy to the Oklahoma Arts Council, State Representative Josh Cockroft replied, “The time has come to set priorities and to exercise spending discipline” (Knight 2013). In these types of arguments, the arts are cast as an extra, undisciplined endeavor that takes away from a prioritized and solid skills-​based education focused on reading, writing, and arithmetic. In the 1997 report “Ten Good Reasons to Eliminate Funding for the National Endowment for the Arts,” The Heritage Foundation (1997)—​a U.S.  conservative public policy think tank—​outlined the ways in which it is believed that artist funding promotes pornography and cultural elitism while lowering the quality of U.S. art. Although it has been more than twenty years since this report was released, many of the Foundation’s core arguments can still be found in cultural and political debates surrounding arts funding, arts education, public school budgets, and the value of arts at large in U.S. society. For instance, in March 2018, the Winona School District in Minnesota proposed $1.7 million in budget cuts; this included a plan to eliminate the fourth-​grade orchestra, music lessons, and two or three music teacher positions and to reduce the number of high school theater productions (Farris 2018). The superintendent was quoted in the local paper as saying, “Balancing a budget is a difficult task. There will have to be difficult decisions” (Farris 2018). In response, students shared their pleas for keeping their arts programs during these difficult times. One stated, “Music impacts people’s lives extremely. If you take the core pieces away … it will collapse like Jenga” (Collins 2018). Another said that “music gives me a moment to relax and have fun,” and “I only made

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6  Ilana Morgan friends through music” (Collins 2018). Still another student shared that music is what made him feel human (Collins 2018). How do we describe the goals and values of arts education during continuing disputes that involve budgetary and political perceptions? How do we connect the value of the arts to—​as the students just explained—​ the ways in which we inform our senses of identity and humanity and build our lives? When the arts are easily disregarded as a vital educative component, I  argue that we are simultaneously questioning the value of people’s lives, individual identities, and rights. Arts education serves as an important means by which we can support the development of empathetic and civically engaged citizens. With this in mind, I offer in this chapter a pedagogical framework of goals and teaching strategies to create connections among arts education, civic and citizenship development, cultural understanding, and the development of empathy (as seen in Figure 1.1). I present this framework alongside key moments from our recent U.S. political and social landscape in the hopes that the framework will offer ways to associate and connect arts learning and teaching to prospects of social change, social justice, and civic engagement (as seen in Figure 1.2). I also outline the methodology used to create this framework and provide a definition of social justice and aesthetic education used in this chapter. I then conclude with a short analysis of the philosophical areas which support the development of this framework:  aesthetic inquiry as cognition, aesthetic education and empathy, and aesthetic education and social justice oriented citizenship. I share this pedagogical framework to practically assist those who teach arts in the classroom and those who advocate for arts education inclusion in a democratic public education system. In my experience as a K–​12 dance educator and assistant professor of dance, anti-​arts-​ education discourse can be burdensome for arts educators; it requires arts teachers to be both advocates and educators, interchangeably and at all times. My goal is to provide a succinct explanation and overarching umbrella from which to articulate the value and goals of arts education in relationship to citizenship development for K–​12 students. This framework consists of four goals for arts education and six possible areas in which one might put these goals into action. It was developed from specific theoretical and philosophical methodologies as well as from my own teaching perspectives and experiences. Although conservative think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation and other groups that propose the elimination of arts funding might not consider arts education to be important to the development of productive U.S. citizens, it is my proposal that arts education and a commitment to creative collaboration contribute to the development of children into compassionate and democratic citizens who can create a more livable world, and become creative and innovative contributors to our country.

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Figure 1.1 Arts Education Framework.

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Figure 1.2 U.S. Political/​Social Moments and Movements.

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Arts Education and Citizenship 9

A Proposed Framework for Arts Education The framework has four distinct goals for arts education in the development of social justice oriented citizenship. Further, it addresses why arts education is important beyond immediate arts-​based learning outcomes and objectives. This framework is intended to assist educators when thinking about the purpose and meaningfulness of arts learning as they advocate for its inclusion in school settings. Arts Education Goals 1. 2. 3. 4.

Heighten awareness of multiple truths and perspectives; Build skills of negotiating and disagreement; Develop ability to see and articulate difference with respect; Strengthen aesthetic awareness of diverse people, arts knowledge, and artistic perspectives.

Examples of Classroom Practice In this section, I give examples of curriculum and lesson ideas and verbal prompts for teachers as strategies that provide practice-​oriented context for the framework goals listed in the previous section. These practices can be used in the areas of dance, theater, media arts, music, and visual arts; they could also be implemented in non-​arts-​based classrooms. This section is intended to provide the reader some classroom strategies and is not to meant to be an exhaustive list, as there are many ways one might put the framework goals into practice. See and Be Seen 1. Find and take time to silently watch complete works of theater and dance with performers who differ from your students in terms of race, class, nationality, gender, and culture. 2. Rather than explaining what students should see in a dance or painting, explain and ask, “Let’s hold our thoughts about what we think, or what you think it means, and focus instead on what you see. What and who do you see?” Listen to Others 1. Provide written and audio/​ visual artist interviews and artist statements to learn about how, why, and what propelled the artist to create this way.

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10  Ilana Morgan 2. Ask questions and listen deeply to understand the process and artistic inquiry of classmates. “If the artist describes this trio as an investigation of a sunset, what can we ask to find out more about her process?” Honor Spaces and Bodies 1. Practice “blind casting” by casting according to ability rather than look, height, race, or gender of an actor, and if applicable provide students information about how choices were made. 2. Define safe practices and support the development of personal agency. “She is telling us she does not want to be lifted during this part of the dance. It is her body, and she will decide if she wants to be lifted.” Connect Arts Creations to a Larger World 1. Work to weave issues, contexts, cultures, concerns, and celebrations into the arts classroom. 2. Employ a wide variety of arts traditions, philosophies, ideas, and experiences, not only Western perspectives. 3. Ask students what concerns them most. Teach them ways to find out what is happening in the world, and encourage them to use artistic expression to understand, react to, or explore. 4. Encourage analysis of personal context through art making by promoting use of familial stories; political ideas; and personal, family, and cultural histories. Center the Work and Decenter the Student 1. Practice activities that bring attention and focus through the use of eyes, skin, performance, line, texture, shape, color, relationships, timing, character, space, qualities, and so on. 2. Ask what the artwork or artistic process needs or is asking us to do. “What does this landscape need next in this watercolor, and why? What is present in this work so far, and what artistic choices are becoming revealed as I progress?” Recognize Stories, Ideas, and People 1. Highlight artworks and artists that are not traditionally represented. Consider artists on YouTube, child artists, elderly artists, artists with differently abled bodies, and those from differing cultural contexts.

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Arts Education and Citizenship 11 2. Find stories of perseverance, heartache, joy, and everyday life from cultures that are both different and similar to students’ communities. Look for common ground as well as stark differences.

Methodology This research uses a relational and reflective philosophical methodology grounded in a qualitative postpositivist approach. This approach acknowledges that an objective framework for arts education for all situations and learners is not possible; rather, a practical framework that will guide teaching and learning in the arts requires multiple observations, deep reflection, and specific consideration and acknowledgment of differing cultural experiences, worldviews, and, in this case, political and social landscapes. A  methodology that will fit these varying needs dictates an approach that could be associated with craft:  messy assemblage, experimentation, reflection, and revision as contexts, needs, values, and societal pressures change. This nonlinear relational approach incorporates philosophical analysis of current theories in the area of education, affect theory, and arts education. This analysis, coupled with my own teaching experience, creates the base on which the framework was built. Norman K. Denzin and Yvonne S. Lincoln (2005), who wrote about qualitative research, drew attention to pragmatic and context-​dependent values as being integral to understanding knowledge as “collective knowing” and a “socially constructed and socially distributed phenomenon” (50). This approach requires attention be paid to the experiences and bias of the researcher, especially with regard to a commitment to the socially constructed nature of knowledge. While developing this framework, I reflected on my own personal teaching experiences and values as a dance educator in U.S.  public schools, and I  sought to continually practice intentionality and awareness of my biases as the research unfolded. I paid particular attention to my social and political leanings, the value that I place on social justice work, and my strong ethical belief that arts are central to a productive life and society. These biases remain present and also propel this work. I offer this acknowledgment of bias and reflexivity to my readers as they engage with this framework. To further an incorporation of relational constructionism, I wanted this methodology to involve the pointed consideration of moments within the current political landscape in the U.S. Arguments can be made that the political and social points presented are not important and that the educational framework stands on its own without this contextual offering. However, to fully bring into view specific visions and goals of arts education, the political and social landscape—​ which affects arts education via funding, ethics, goals, and a federally

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12  Ilana Morgan mandated curriculum—​ must be considered. This idea is supported by Andrew Gunn’s (2015) chapter in the book Theory and Method in Higher Education, which identifies ways that political and policy analysis can be included in education research: The first category of research we can identify is where policy documents and political events are used as a backdrop to a range of studies. Policy documents and political events provide context to the research questions where they set the scene, although the actual research is not into the political or policy per se. … [P]‌olitical context is of value as it identifies drivers of change and the wider landscape beyond the area of immediate investigation. (30) The political moments and movements are meant to serve as a backdrop to the framework, and the reader is invited to consider ideas about teaching and learning in the midst of this landscape. I also encourage readers to consider new political and social issues or moments that they feel support or shadow their own teaching goals and practices.

Social Justice and Aesthetic Education I found the political to be personal in new ways in 2017, and I  viewed certain political visions, presidential choices, and continued social inequities as challenges to arts education in the U.S. Furthermore, I found that President Trump’s choice making as led by the inclusion—​or, rather, the exclusion—​of others with the phrase “America First!” posed potential risks to an arts pedagogy that seeks to help students celebrate difference while treating others with respect and empathy. The preceding arts framework is civically purposeful in that it lays out possible guidelines for resistance to misogyny and to racial and religious prejudice while fulfilling the important educational goals of teaching problem-​solving and empathy through arts and aesthetics. Arts education can be a radical means of fighting injustice and promoting social justice when we weave information about various communities, ideas, and people into students’ educational experiences. With this in mind, it is important to define aesthetic education and social justice as they are used in this article. For the purposes of this research, I  define aesthetic education as a pedagogical approach and perspective that engages students with works of art and art making through project based learning, critical thinking, hands-​on inquiry, and critical reflection in an effort to come to know and understand the qualitative differences and aesthetics of art. Most important to this definition of aesthetic education is that such education guides students toward the development of new ways of seeing,

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Arts Education and Citizenship 13 problem solving, and relating to a changing world through the study of artistic qualities, differences, and creative processes. Social justice can be broadly defined as fair and just relations between society and the individual. If we think of society as a system in which individual experiences interrelate and are affected by structures of politics and government, race, power, and economics, the work of social justice can be a kind of unfolding, unpacking, and revealing of imbalances and privileges within that system. I  identify social justice work as two parts:  identifying inequities and then proposing actions required to move toward more just relations, common good, and the equal distribution of resources, rights, and opportunities. I  also consider social justice work to be a never-​ending practice that encompasses varied actions of both individuals and groups and includes the development of educational strategies, governmental policy and proposals, and individual relationships and coalitions. In this chapter, I consider the framework of goals and pedagogical practices as embodying this second part of the social justice definition; a proposition of actions toward more just relations. In this definition the proposal of the framework, and the framework itself, is a kind of social justice work. Envisioning and employing a pedagogical practice that seeks to encourage development of civic and citizenship development, cultural understanding, and the development of empathy is an active social justice endeavor. I  do not consider this proposed framework as social justice education because I  define social justice education as teaching students how to analyze oppression, about tools they might use for social change and action, and how to critique systems of power and societal inequalities. Although teachers might employ an aspect of the framework in this way, they also might choose not to. For example, teachers might engage with a section of the framework that encourages classroom practices to help students see others more deeply. They might do this by asking students to reflect in writing about the movement and choreographic structure they see in a classmate’s choreography (not social justice education). Or, they might create a lesson in which students look into funding data of large U.S. dance companies and analyze what and who gets funded with particular attention to gender and race, and then write an analysis about who is being seen and who is not being seen when it comes to large funded companies in the U.S. (social justice education). Either example supports a teaching practice to help students see others, but I would not categorize both as social justice education. Next, I offer three foundational areas that support the idea of aesthetic education as a social justice endeavor, and from which my proposed framework was developed. Of particular import are philosophical ideas in the area of arts education that identify aesthetic education as

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14  Ilana Morgan cognition, and as influential in the development of empathy and justice-​ oriented citizenship. Aesthetic Education as Cognition Before considering arts and aesthetic education as a way to develop empathy and kind citizenship, it is important to consider the ways in which creating in the arts is actually thinking and cognition. Learning via an unfolding creative process can be viewed as a complex and engaged cognition in which new knowledge and connection to the world unveil new meanings and consciousness for students. In this way, cognition, movement and action, subjectivity, and environment bloom together, and it is why an aesthetic arts education experience has the ability to affect a person’s awareness of multiple truths and perspectives, and their development of articulating difference with respect. Understanding arts learning as thinking moves us away from arts education only as a task or activity, and moves us toward understanding arts education as a kind of world making and shaper of identity. Social and affect theorists Erin Manning and Brian Massumi (2014) proposed the idea of potential “in the making” in their book Thought in the Act: Passages in the Ecology of Experience: “Every practice is a mode of thought, already in the act. To dance: a thinking in movement. To paint: a thinking through color. To perceive in the everyday: a thinking of the world’s varied ways of affording itself ” (1). This assertion—​that to engage in aesthetic difference and qualitative reasoning with the world is cognition rather than an arts activity with defined starting and ending points—​helps to position arts education as involving the active and perceptive making of meaning. The ways in which art making can position human perception and thought demand that attention be paid to an idea of potential and processual becoming via creative processes. Valerie Triggs (2015), theorist and professor of art education, defined these ideas through the perspective of affect theory. She highlighted the intricate repositioning, reflection, and embodied inquiry that are essential to art making and engagement, and she posited that these aesthetic judgments and their associated reasoning position arts education as “practicing to feel the potential directly adjacent to each new encounter with the world” (Triggs 2015, 160). I consider Triggs’s words as helping to explain that, when students engage in art making, they are learning to find potential and weigh choices as they create their own worlds, either in their artworks or through the choices that they make in their lives. Manning and Massumi (2014) also wrote about an encounter with the world as an encounter with texture:

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Arts Education and Citizenship 15 To experience the texture of the world “without discrimination” is not indifference. Texture is patterned, full of contrast and movement, gradients and transitions. It is complex and differentiated. To attend to everything “the same way” is not an inattention to life. It is to pay equal attention to the full range of life’s texturing complexity, with an entranced and unhierarchized commitment to the way in which the organic and the inorganic, color, sound, smell, and rhythm, perception and emotion, intensely interweave into the “aroundness” of a textured world, alive with difference. (74–​75) If aesthetic education propels students to think with and through textured environments and they come to see the world as being alive with difference and complexity, then the potential to create their own worlds as inclusive of difference and variation becomes possible. Without options or “portals” to seeing “our world experienced differently” (Triggs 2015, 161), such potential ceases to exist. It is these encounters with change and difference that Triggs articulated as “something we make of ourselves” (Triggs 2015, 160). In this kind of making, creative potential can become the means through which the student, artistic expression, and perception bloom together, in what Triggs (2015) suggested “may contribute to making lives more livable and the world feel more inhabitable for now and for the future” (162). Aesthetic Education and Empathy Philosopher and arts educator Maxine Greene (2007) considered her philosophy of education and practice to encompass the following: I “do” philosophy of education, and what we call aesthetic education in contexts of metropolitanism and the marvelous diversity that characterizes it. I ponder these, keep exploring them, and try to teach … grounded in understanding of experiences from an existential perspective, focused on acts of consciousness. (1) She explained the connection between aesthetic engagement and the artistic process as it relates to the act of seeing and becoming “wide-​ awake;” however, she argued that what is paramount is how this aesthetic experience becomes a conscious experience and one in which meaning is “richer and more complex …. The effort is to move beyond mere ‘looking at’ or to turn attention away from imposing a story that makes invisible the aesthetic qualities of a work” (Greene 2007, 4).

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16  Ilana Morgan Greene went on to connect this aesthetic awareness to the ability to empathize with and care for others. She noted that to become “wide-​ awake” is to allow oneself to be seen, to deeply see others, to see possibility in collaboration, and to be fully present: To be enabled to activate the imagination is to discover not only possibility, but to find the gaps, the empty spaces that require filling as we move from the is to the might be, to the should be. To release the imagination too is to release the power of empathy, to become more present to those around, perhaps to care. (Greene 2007, 4) Doug Risner and Susan W. Stinson (2010) warned of a shallow multiculturalism when teaching to support the development of cultural awareness and empathy in students. They wrote regarding the limitations of dance education with a focus only on learning “about” the exotic other, rather than learning “from and with” those unlike us, or those whose dancing is different from ours …. More simply, a multicultural “tourist” conception … leaves out real learning from and with non-​western cultural forms as well as all the complex identities and experiences in our own dominant white population. (9) To become “wide-​awake” and to learn from varied textures of experience becomes difficult if boundaries are drawn around categories of people. Without a nuanced approach to consider variation within cultural groups and to act “from empathetic perspectives within all cultural contexts and social differences” (Risner and Stinson 2010, 10), a well-​intentioned search for empathy can fall short. Professor of Sociology and African-​ American Studies Patricia Hill Collins (2005) wrote about the complexity of difference and intersectionality in relationship to the development of empathy: “Once we realize that there are few pure victims or oppressors, and that each one of us derives varying amounts of penalty and privilege from the multiple systems of oppression that frame our lives, then we will be in a position to see the needs for new ways for thought and action” (36). One step she identified to get at and disrupt the ways in which “socially-​ sanctioned ideologies” (Collins 2005, 39)  justify oppression is to find new ways to build relationships with others and to see them and come to know them deeply. She cited this relational step as helping people to move beyond the objectification and stereotyping of others. She stated,

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Arts Education and Citizenship 17 “These judgements by category must be replaced with fully human relationships that transcend the legitimate difference created by race, class, and gender as categories of analysis. We require new categories of connection, new visions of what our relationships with one another can be” (Collins 2005, 36). Like Greene, Risner, and Stinson, Collins called for a wide-​awakeness that involves empathetically seeing the reality of individuals’ experiences, which makes it difficult to deny their authenticity and to dehumanize them as people (Collins 2005, 40). Aesthetic Education and Citizenship I teach and research pedagogy at the college level, and in my own teaching I  have seen the ways in which arts education contributes to an individual’s ability to become a kind citizen. I  have watched students of all ages see a person, a situation, or a problem with a new perspective after engaging with inquiry-​based artistic creation and expression that involved working with people or communities different from themselves. Being able to work with and understand others’ perspectives is at the core of thoughtful citizenship, and it is required in a nation as diverse as the U.S. Expanding students’ ability to be aware of diverse people and knowledges, seeing and respecting others different than oneself, and becoming aware of multiple truths and perspectives provides support in developing skills of negotiating and disagreement, an essential skill in productive democratic participation. The definition of citizenship as it relates to education and curriculum varies widely. Joseph Westheimer and Joseph Kahne (2004) categorized the philosophical approaches to this subject. They outlined three types of citizens: (1) the participatory citizen; (2) the personally responsible citizen; and (3)  the justice-​oriented citizen, who works to “analyze and understand the interplay of social, economic, and political forces” (240). Teaching from a justice-​oriented perspective “seeks to prepare students to improve society by critically analyzing and addressing social issues and injustices” (Westheimer and Kahne 2004, 240). Aesthetic education is considered supportive to the development of justice-​ oriented citizenship, especially by philosophers who contemplate the aims of curriculum and the functions of schooling from a constructivist perspective. Cara Rautins and Awad Ibrahim (2011), who wrote about the pedagogy of imagination, stated that “a democratic pedagogy which seeks to harmonize the tension between freedom and authority is necessary to foster wide-​awakeness and move students toward creative possibilities for a promising future” (24).

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18  Ilana Morgan Many from the progressive movement, including John Dewey ([1934] 2005), philosopher and education reformer, harnessed a constructivist approach to education; they viewed education as the process of a student developing his or her own understanding on the basis of perceptions, experiences, personal subjectivity, and reflection. With this approach, the teacher or the curriculum is not the keeper of knowledge imparted to the student. Aesthetic education is similarly aligned; in addition to viewing learning as students developing their own understandings, this type of education views artistic engagement as not happening in solitude but rather as occurring within the public sphere. This active and public engagement has the potential to increase a student’s critical consciousness. Rautins and Ibrahim (2011) described it as the “ability to be mindful of oneself and others, opening up space for conscious deliberation of how the world is constructed in terms of knowledge, power, and inequality” (26). The work of Greene (1978) is again relevant to connecting the arts and citizenship when she described student engagement with a work of art as a means of “posing questions” and “sense making in a confusing world” (165). Her ideas push an acknowledgment of aesthetic education as an avenue for developing skills of seeing, creating, and critically assessing and to then consider the implications of these activities for a democratic society. According to Greene (1978), “There are works of art … that were deliberately created to move people to critical awareness, to a sense of moral agency, and to a conscious engagement with the world” (163). She further connected this awareness to democracy: “The good society is deeply rooted in a tradition of democratic community. … Democratic community is deeply rooted in an existential notion of wide awakeness” (Greene, quoted in Kisaka and Osman 2013, 343). Dewey ([1934] 2005) also associated citizenship with conscious and critical thinking arising from aesthetic arts education: Instruction in the arts of life is something other than conveying information about them. It is a matter of communication and participation in values of life by means of the imagination and works of art are the most intimate and energetic means of aiding individuals to share in the art of living. Civilization is uncivil because human beings are divided into non-​communicating sects, races, nations, classes and cliques. (350) Some dispositions of justice-​oriented citizenship involve a strong civic identity, with the individual working to ensure the good of others, practicing thoughtful collaboration, performing educated problem solving,

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Arts Education and Citizenship 19 and acknowledging difference with respect. Arts education imagines the ways in which civility, mindfulness, and empathy can support justice-​ oriented citizenship and positions this type of education as ancillary to this goal.

Conclusion On February 14, 2018, seventeen people were killed and seventeen more were wounded in a school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. I have been in awe as a group of surviving students from this high school mobilized to create a grassroots movement calling for stricter gun laws and to organize protests across the nation declaring “Never Again” and “Enough Is Enough” when it comes to gun-​related deaths. It was no surprise for me to learn that the leaders of this group were all part of the theater program at their high school. The skills these students developed through theater productions—​organizing, negotiating, creating together, working with others who hold different opinions and perspectives, and being articulate and succinct when speaking to large groups of people—​all supported their ability to lead a national movement. These ideas resonated with me as I worked on the final draft of this chapter and again demonstrated the vital contributions of arts education to effective citizenship. We have work to do when it comes to securing the future of arts education through funding and a supportive ideology; we must also ensure that the arts are viewed as essential to a well-​rounded education. The current political landscape and the tenor of the country require strict and strong pedagogical actions. Educators must speak loudly about teaching and learning needs and teach students how to raise their voices while teaching them how to see, hear, and empathize with those around them while negotiating difference. As arts educators, we are uniquely positioned to effect change. According to Greene (1978), [i]‌f the uniqueness of aesthetic education can be reaffirmed, if we can consider futuring as we combat immersion, old either/​ors may disappear. We may make possible a pluralism of visions, a multiplicity of realities. We may enable those we teach to rebel. (182) It is my hope that these goals and this list of teaching practices provides new ideas regarding teaching strategies and classroom activities to those who teach in the arts. These practices are intended to help educators understand connections between aesthetic seeing, listening, and learning with others as a path toward the development of engaged,

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20  Ilana Morgan thinking citizens. The four goals of arts education can be printed out, placed in classrooms, and sent to administrators and parents; they should serve as a reminder that—​sitting above school, curriculum, and state and national standards—​there are larger goals for arts teaching and learning. When arts educators are asked to prove the worth of arts education, we must articulate how arts learning is an essential component of the development of students’ senses of who they are, both in the world and in their relationships with others. Arts education is not in service to state testing goals, nor is the presence of arts education in K–​12 schools only intended to make students better at math, science, and reading. When students create from nothing a work of art that is meaningful, they are practicing the making of smart and meaningful choices, which sets the stage for the creation of a future for themselves, their communities, and their country.

References Collins, Bob. 2018. “Winona Area Schools Target Arts and Hockey in Cuts.” Minnesota Public Radio, March 21. Accessed March 25, 2018. https://​ blogs.mprnews.org/​newscut/​2018/​03/​winona-​area-​schools-​tar get-​arts-​and-​ hockey-​in-​cuts/​. Collins, Patricia Hill. 2005. “Toward a New Vision: Race, Class, and Gender as Categories of Analysis and Connection.” In Race, Gender and Class, edited by Bart Landry, 35–​45. New York, NY: Routledge. Davis, Lizzy Cooper. 2016. “The Summer Leadership Institute: Strengthening Core Muscles for Organizing, Art-​making and Community Building.” Urban Bush Women Choreographic Center, March 12. Accessed March 19, 2018. www.urbanbushwomen c e n t e r.o r g /​v o i c e s f r o m t h e b u s h /​2 0 16/​3 /​1 2 /9​ zxcis31 eerg6gto9tlf2p402p888s. Denzin, Norman K., and Yvonna S. Lincoln. 2005. The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. Dewey, John. [1934] 2005. Art as Experience. New York, NY: Penguin. Farris, Kyle. 2018. “As Cuts Loom, Winona Students make Final Stand for the Arts.” Winona Daily News, March 21. Accessed March 25, 2018. www. winonadailynews.com/​news/​local/​as-​cuts-​loom-​winonastudents-​make-​final-​ stand-​for-​the/​article_​91ac3782-​ef41-​52f2-​9f70346ac9719fe0.html. Greene, Maxine. 1978. Landscapes of Learning. New  York, NY:  Teachers College Press. Greene, Maxine. 2007. “Imagination and the Healing Arts.” The Maxine Greene Institute. Accessed December 7, 2017. https://​maxinegreene.org/​uploads/​ library/​imagination_​ha.pdf. Gunn, Andrew. 2015. “The Role of Political and Policy Studies in Higher Education Policy Research.” In Theory and Method in Higher Education Research, edited by Jeroen Huisman and Malcolm Tight, 27–​48. Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing. The Heritage Foundation. 1997. “Ten Good Reasons to Eliminate Funding for the National Endowment for the Arts.” Accessed December 7, 2017.

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Arts Education and Citizenship 21 www.heritage.org/​budget-​and-​spending/​report/​tengood-​reasons-​eliminate-​ funding-​the-​national-​endowment-​the-​arts. Ingold, David, Chloe Whiteaker, Michael Keller, and Hannah Recht. 2017. “These 80 Programs Would Lose Federal Funding Under Trump’s Proposed Budget.” Bloomberg Politics. Accessed December 7 2018. www.bloomberg. com/​graphics/​2017-​trump-​budget/​. Kisaka, Sella T., and Ahmed A, Osman. 2013. “Education as a Quest to Freedom: Reflections on Maxine Greene.” Journal of Emerging Trends in Educational Research and Policy Studies 4 (2):338–​344. Knight, Christopher. 2013. “Bill Seeks to Eliminate Funding for Oklahoma Arts Council.” Los Angeles Times, January 24 2018. http://​articles.latimes. com/ ​ 2 013/ ​ j an/ ​ 2 4/​ e ntertainment/​ l a-​ e t-​ c m-​ b ill-​ e liminate- ​ o klahomaarts-​ council-​funding-​20130124. Manning, Erin, and Brian Massumi. 2014. Thought in the Act: Passages in the Ecology of Experience. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Rautins, Cara, and Awad Ibrahim. 2011. “Wide-​awakeness: Toward a Critical Pedagogy of Imagination, Humanism, Agency, and Becoming.” International Journal of Critical Pedagogy 3 (3):24–​36. Risner, Doug, and Susan Stinson. 2010. “Moving Social Justice:  Challenges, Fears and Possibilities in Dance Education.” International Journal of Education and the Arts 11 (6):1–​26. Accessed March 28, 2018. www.ijea.org/​ v11n6/​v11n6.pdf. Triggs, Valerie. 2015. “Art as Ecological Practice.” In International Yearbook for Research in Arts Education 3/​2015:  The Wisdom of the Many  –​Key Issues in Arts Education, edited by Shifra Schonmann, 159–​163. New York, NY: Waxmann Verlag. Trump, Donald. 2017. “Trump’s Inaugural Speech in Full  –​Video.” Reuters video, 16:33. Posted by TheGuardian.com, January 2018. www.theguardian. com/​world/​video/​2017/​jan/​20/​donaldtrump-​inauguration-​speech-​full-​video. Westheimer, Joel, and Joseph Kahne. 2004. “What Kind of Citizen? The Politics of Educating for Democracy.” American Educational Research Journal 41 (2):237–​269. doi: 10.3102/​00028312041002237.

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2  Teaching African Dances as Civic Engagement Pedagogic Perspectives of Teachers of African Dances in North America, Europe, New Zealand, and Asia Alfdaniels Mabingo

As I come to understand the power of dance education as a transformative experience—​one that is badly needed to overcome the limitations of our differences and to recognize our commonalties—​ I become convinced that dance educators have been given a unique gift. (Shapiro 2008a, 272)

Sherry Shapiro’s reflection imagines a world in which dance educators can be significant agents in facilitating peoples’ amenability to diverse cultural experiences. The growing ethnocentric abhorrence of diversity in Western countries (Mudde 2012) and its apparent threat to undermine constructive dance education (Rowe et  al. 2018) calls for an examination of the role that dance education can play in addressing these disconcerting attitudes. Although dance has been examined as a medium through which diverse cultural experiences can be explored (Albright 2003; Buck and Meiners 2017; Warburton 2017), studies investigating how teachers of African dances use teaching and learning processes to foster civic understanding are scarce. This chapter critically examines how teachers of African dances have applied pedagogies of African dances as civic engagement in New Zealand and some countries in North America, Europe, and Asia. In the context of this analysis, civic understanding is conceptualized as learners’ amenability to the cultural realities, epistemological worldviews, and artistic experiences of African people. This amenability is achieved through embodied, reflective, and experiential learning of songs, stories, drum rhythms, movements, and techniques of African dances and people.

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Teaching African Dances as Civic Engagement 23

Re/​Telling African Stories: Do Teachers of African Dances Have a Role to Play? Examining the dance teacher’s agency in fostering civic understanding entailed analyzing what Valentino Mudimbe (1988) referred to as invention of Africa, particularly the Western negative perceptions that are constructed about Africa as a dark continent, a concentration of shithole countries, and primitive society. Expounding on this invention as a Western reality, Edward Said (1978), in his seminal book, Orientalism, explained how the media, creative works, and intellectual narratives by the occident (West) fabricate and otherize the orients (people from non-​Western cultures). The stratifications of the West versus the rest are compounded by discourses, which view Anglo-​Saxon cultures as irresoluble with non-​Western civilizations (Huntington 1992). The reductionist characterization of Africa as a hotbed of disease, hunger, wars, and civilizational retardation and a place in dire need of Western altruism (Poncian 2015) has created a Western citizenry that knows one single (negative) African story (Adichie 2009). Such perceptions are revealed by how African dances are romanticized as exotic, fetishized as erotic, and containerized as “world dance” and “African dance.” Highlighting this perception, Gerald Mayen (2006) observed, “the valorization of the body privileged in African dance, particularly the male body displaying a nude torso, falls prey to the white gaze, which is intrigued with the exotic, sexual vitality of the black body” (48, 170). In dance education contexts, Doug Risner and Susan W.  Stinson (2010) railed against a European-​American mentality, which continues to think of western dance forms as “normal” … and then conservatively sprinkle[s]‌non-​western dance forms and content like exotic condiments on the western meal of meat and potatoes. … This is primarily because dance educators have not moved beyond superficial treatment of cultures outside our own. (5) With the surging vitriolic nativism in some Western countries, the already precarious position of African dances within the Western intellectual and public purview can only get more jeopardized. This chapter divulges how dance teachers use pedagogies of African dances to address the negative perceptions about Africa by exposing learners to the complex epistemological and ontological foundations of the dances, the people, and the cultures.

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24  Alfdaniels Mabingo

Conceptualizing the Research Questions: An Autoethnographic  Search Examination of this subject emanated from my teaching experiences of Ugandan dances in the U.S., Australia, Europe, and New Zealand. I have encountered people who have expressed that they want to take “African dance” classes so that they can “feel how to get low and build muscles,” experience how to “dance to the drum,” “have fun,” and “shake the butt.” Whereas these notions disclose the multifaceted curiosities of people, they also objectify these dances as mere physical activities bereft of valid and valuable epistemological manifestations (Mills 1997). Additionally, I have also noticed how the growing phenomenon of diasporic dance has made the notion of African dances more multifarious. Hence, I delimited this study to continental African dances for analytical clarity. To formulate questions that would elicit complex reflections from the dance teachers, I drew on La Walker’s and Teesa Lanea Ayow’s (2016) observation that “the diversity of our lived realities makes evident that black bodies cannot be contained by one fixed representation. When the individual black dancing body is metonymized, its unique experiences become invisibilized” (37). I framed the following key research question to provide a framework of inquiry and analysis:  How do teachers of African dances in New Zealand and some countries in North America, Europe, and Asia apply pedagogy to foster civic understanding? I  further engaged the following subquestions to investigate the nuanced research themes: (1) What conditions necessitate teaching African dances as civic engagement? (2) How do the dance teachers support learners to have agency in learning the African dances as valid, valuable, and transformative knowledge? (3)  What dilemmas are encountered in teaching African dances as drivers of civic engagement?

Understanding Perspectives Through Dance: Some Literary Viewpoints As part of the review of literature, I considered Shapiro’s (2008b) observation that “globalization has opened new possibilities for appreciating and recognizing the amazing range of embodied human expressions” (vii). In the article “Contextualizing Dance Education Globally and Locally,” Ralph Buck and Jeff Meiners (2017) explained how dance is well placed as a vehicle for positive change and intercultural connections, both globally and locally. They highlighted that in diverse environments, dance gives people agency to embody, negotiate, and understand the complexities of sociocultural differences and commonalities.

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Teaching African Dances as Civic Engagement 25 However, the work of Buck and Meiners (2017) is being threatened by the continuing obsession with segregative nativism in Western society, which has manifested itself in Trumpism and Brexitism (Rowe et  al. 2018). In the article “Researching Dance Education Post-​2016:  The Global Implications of Brexit and Trump on Dance Education,” Nicholas Rowe et al. (2018) revealed the fears and anxieties of selected global dance educators about the negative effects of these two political movements on the free flow of dance traditions, ideas, and knowledge from underrepresented communities to Western academic landscape. Given the foregoing circumstances, utilization of dance education to bridge differences raises questions related to how teachers can effectively apply pedagogies to illuminate diverse ideas, nourish experiences, and expand performative and reflective thought. According to Shapiro (2008a), the effectiveness of critical dance pedagogies depends on how the teacher seeks to address the following questions: What should we teach? How should we teach? Who should we teach? What is the role of the teacher? For what are we teaching? Can dance tell us something about our cultures and ourselves? Can it tell us about the human condition? (266) In diverse cultural contexts, Cheryl Stock (2001) further raised questions that can act as a lens to examine how teaching dance can participate in facilitating civic understanding: How do we accommodate and validate difference and yet educate students in and about dance in the international context of western dominance, technical virtuosity and a demand for the new and different? How do we prepare our students for a career in dance or an appreciation of the value and potential of dance where the parameters are continually shifting? (3) Edward Warburton (2017) articulated how embodied dance experiences can be leveraged by dance teachers to navigate intercultural under­ stand­ ing  and connections. Drawing on his experience as a participant in the ArtsCross project, Warburton unveiled how collaborative creative processes in dance yielded symbiotic connections and respect between people of diverse backgrounds. He described how diverse choreographers and dancers in the project used embodied and reflective experiences to connect by sharing their diverse kinesthetic and artistic skills and knowledge.

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26  Alfdaniels Mabingo What makes dance a suitable medium for meaningful negotiation of cultural experiences is that the body has come to be understood as the aesthetic realm where meaning is made, life is experienced, and truth is understood as the concrete material inscribed by cultural values, attitudes, and beliefs and the vehicle for transcending our limited social identities. (Shapiro 2008a, 261) Thus, I investigated the question of how teachers of African dances use pedagogies to illuminate African stories, realities, experiences, and cultures in ways that transcend negative stereotypical perceptions about Africa from this vantage point. According to Shapiro (2008a), some of the dances that have offered diverse viewpoints for learners are from Africa: “today we find African dance courses being taught alongside ballet and modern dance in colleges and universities as well as blending of African and modern dance to create new dance forms [in Europe and the United States]” (viii). Scholars have examined how integrating African dances in European-​ American academic and nonacademic systems can diversify cultural, artistic, and intellectual perspectives (Banks 2010; Kuwor 2013; Mabingo 2014a, 2014b, 2015a, 2015b). These scholars show how African dances offer valid and valuable knowledge beyond the commonly perceived exotic movement experience. Missing in these scholarly discourses is a critical examination of how teachers of African dances use pedagogies to foster civic understanding of learners. This chapter fills this gap by placing the pedagogic perspectives of teachers of African dances at the center of this analysis.

Teaching African Dances as a Transformative and Acculturative Experience: A Theoretical Consideration To understand how pedagogies of African dances are a vehicle for positive attitudinal and perceptive change, I anchored this analysis in two theoretical paradigms: the theories of transformative learning (Mezirow 1991) and acculturation (Bennett 1993). These theories provided a lens of analysis on how the teachers’ pedagogies shifted the learners’ “habits of mind that were articulated in a specific point of view—​the constellation of belief, value judgment, attitude and feeling that shapes a particular interpretation” (Mezirow 1997, 6). Drawing on Buck and Meiners’s (2017) observation that “dance is an agent for reflection, for change and for transformation” (39), I  analyzed how the dance teachers’ pedagogies sought to “affect change in the frame of reference” (Mezirow 1997, 5) of learners.

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Teaching African Dances as Civic Engagement 27 The theoretical analysis expanded understanding of how the dance teachers center the learners as agents in acculturative transformation from ethnocentric predispositions to ethnorelative cultural and intellectual empathies (Bennett 1993). Thus, the pedagogic processes were examined as what Henry Giroux (1987) called critical literacy, a way of “developing theoretical and practical conditions through which human beings can locate themselves in their own histories and in doing so make themselves present as agents in their quest to expand the possibilities of human life and freedom” (10–​11).

Research Methods and Data Analysis I employed a qualitative phenomenological approach (Creswell 1998) to examine the pedagogical perspectives of the dance teachers. I elicited information on how they apply pedagogies to experientially, reflectively cultivate the learners’ amenability to African stories, experiences, realities, and cultures. In carrying out this inquiry, I was cognizant that dance education is complex and encompasses the learning objectives of students, nature of the learners, professional identities of teachers, curriculum models, and intricate teaching and learning environments. Accordingly, this study was restricted to how the dance teachers apply pedagogy as a vehicle for civic engagement. Research Participants A total of twenty male and female dance teachers, who had taught for an average of twelve years, were involved in this inquiry. These dance teachers had taught African dances to diverse populations in schools, universities, children and elderly care homes, youth centers, private studios, religious organizations, and community centers. The countries where the dance teachers practiced the pedagogies included New Zealand; France, Germany, Norway, Hungary, Spain, the United Kingdom, Holland, and Denmark in Europe; the United States and Canada in North America; and China, Thailand, and Japan in Asia. Due to the contextual extensiveness and sociocultural specificity of their work, the dance teachers applied different pedagogies. The dance teachers had learned the dances in formal, semiformal, and informal contexts in different ethnic communities in African countries such as Uganda, Mali, Guinea, Senegal, Tanzania, South Africa, Kenya, Rwanda, and Ghana. I used purposive and snowball sampling methods to recruit the dance teachers as research participants. I first contacted known colleagues who were teaching in different countries. In the process of data collection, some dance teachers referred me to other teachers who were doing similar work in different parts of the world.

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28  Alfdaniels Mabingo Data Collection Methods Because the dance teachers were in different countries, I gathered data using asynchronous Internet interview guides (Mann and Stewart 2002). I shared semistructured questions with each dance teacher as a Google document, which allowed me to inquisitorially interact with each dance teacher within his or her document to elicit in-​depth reflections. For countries like China where the dance teachers could not access Google documents, I sent the interview guides as e-​mail attachments, which were answered and e-​mailed back to me. In instances where I had follow-​up questions, I sent additional e-​mails to each individual dance teacher seeking his or her in-​depth input. Data Analysis As a researcher, I considered the credibility, validity, and trustworthiness of the research data and confidentiality of the dance teachers. Consequently, I  engaged diverse dance teachers, including those who had worked in different countries and contexts and taught various African dances, to triangulate data (Flick 2004). To ensure confidentiality of the dance teachers, I used pseudonyms in data transcripts and presentation. I transliterated and reconciled data from the Google documents and e-​mail responses and sent the transcripts back to the dance teachers for clarification. After I received revised transcripts, I read and reread them to immerse myself into the data. I engaged inductive analysis to describe, classify, and establish connections within the data (Dey 1993). The description explained the teaching environments as context of action, the rationales for teaching the dances as intentions of the actor, and actual teaching of dances as a process in which action, experience, the actor, and content congregated. I categorized and connected the key thematic components of the data by identifying uniformities, variants, and singularities (Dey 1993). These themes formed the following sections of the article.

Presentation and Discussion of Findings The Need for Teaching African Dances as Civic Engagement For this inquiry, I investigated the dance teachers’ conceptualization of the conditions in Europe, North America, New Zealand, and Asia that necessitate teaching African dances as civic engagement. Ronnie, who has taught in universities and other community-based settings in Europe, cited negative perceptions that people have about Africa as a condition

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Teaching African Dances as Civic Engagement 29 that warrants teaching of African dances: “Regularly, what is said about Africa is not the diverse cultures, practices, and civilizations that reflect the rich life of the people, but instead negative stories are emphasized.” Relatedly, Meminah, who has taught in schools, universities, and private dance studios in New York, shared, “Media in the U.S. often focus on the monolithic negativities about Africa such as war, disease, and illiteracy.” It is these negative perceptions that have motivated these two dance teachers to use pedagogies of African dances as a counternarrative to challenge these homogenizing perceptions about Africa. Annette, who has also taught in schools, private studios, and universities in New York, explained that the marginalizing notions about Africa are extended into how African dances are negatively perceived: “Learners bring their conceptions about the African continent into learning processes of dances. I have had students question whether or not they should do the dances out of concern that these dances are devilish and backward.” Relatedly, Martin, who has taught in schools, private studios, and communities in New York, shared how some students view African dances as devoid of profound rational foundations: “In my experience as a teacher, I have had students comment, ‘Oh, it is fun!’ (Code for no technique, random movement). ‘Oh, no planning, just go and dance’—​ as in we just make stuff up.” These reductionist interpretations point to the depth of negative attitudes on Africa. This has created the need for multifaceted civic engagement that can address the existing stereotypes that frame African dances as mere exotic physical activities. The negative perceptions about African dances have compounded the cliché that ballet is the foundation of all dances. Annette mentioned, “The myth that ballet is the foundation of all dances is still very widespread and promoted by the negative views that people have about African cultures and people.” In education contexts, the dances are taught using the European-​America pedagogic paradigm as Denise, who has taught in schools, arts centers, and communities in Europe, noted: “There is a tendency to subject dances from African cultures to Euro-​American pedagogic criteria. No attention is given to indigenous pedagogic methods through which knowledge and skills of these dances are developed.” The dance teachers’ reflections reveal how “other important cultural and innovative approaches to dance education are generally overlooked and or considered non-​essential” (Walker and Ayow 2016, 31), which points to the need to teach African dances in ways that can foster civic understanding. Cultivating Civic Understanding: What Can Teaching African Dances Do? In searching for the role that teaching African dances can play in civic sensitization, dance teachers such as Ande, who has taught at a

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30  Alfdaniels Mabingo university and private studios in California, viewed “dance pedagogy as means for understanding that begins to undermine assumptions, prejudices, and misinformation about the continent of Africa.” Bright, who has taught in different communities in China, explained that teaching African dances can lead to perceptual and attitudinal changes about Africa: Teaching African dances initiates anyone’s first contact with a culture alien to that they originate from. This fosters the contact theory of prejudice displacement. As a person learns the songs, stories, and movements of the dances, they acquire the necessary cultural background that informs it, thereby leading to greater cultural awareness, which is ever more necessary in the globalized world. Bright believes that activities such as drumming, singing, storytelling, dancing, celebration of rites of passage, and so on, constitute a pedagogy that provides a peek into the cultures and lives of African people. The learners navigate the cultural aspects that are manifested in key elements that constitute the dances as valid domains of knowledge. Referring to how teaching of dances enables learners to access intrinsic knowledge about Africa, Meminah observed, “Students learn about the region in Guinea from where Djole dances originate, the languages spoken and the stories behind the dances. I  describe the different celebrations, whether wedding or harvest, in which the dances and music are celebrated.” Through holistic teaching, students learn about the language, geography, culture, and demography, themes that are central to articulation of the African stories, experiences, and realities. Mikayla, who has taught in the United Kingdom, China, Japan, and Thailand shared that through African dances, learners can understand that “like the Western dance traditions, African dances are technically rich. It is not just instinctive. There is scientific training behind the dances and extensive knowledge imbedded, which is integral to the civilizations of people.” Tom, who has taught in Europe and New Zealand, expanded on this reflection by mentioning that teaching African dances “is a powerful aspect for students to create a more attuned understanding of the diverse experiences, cultures, and facets of people and communities in Africa that contradicts many of the stereotypes that are constructed about Africa.” By valuing dance pedagogies as a vehicle in addressing ethnocentrism, the dance teachers recognize “dance as a process of education approaching questions of identity, cultural and global awareness that has possibility of transcending the particular, and encompassing commonality” (Shapiro 2008b, ix).

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Teaching African Dances as Civic Engagement 31 For the dance teachers who work in communities with people of color, African dances can facilitate identity formation and lead to deeper understanding of histories. Martin explained, Teaching dances from West African cultures to people of African descent creates a foundation into the exploration of their identity, history, and ancestry. I have seen the students make that connection and form strong identities because of their participation in dances. Martin considers the dances as safe space for the Black diaspora, who always grapple with double selves (DuBois 1903) or twoness (Salazar 2013), to experientially and reflectively explore connections that reaffirm and deepen their sense of belonging, identity, and ancestry. Meminah explained that teaching African dances to recent immigrant students from Africa allows them to tap into their cultural resource: “Some students that I  teach are from the African countries where the dances originate. In considering culturally responsive pedagogy, I  honor the students’ diverse cultural backgrounds and experiences and create space for them to explore and share this in classes.” Meminah’s approach echoes Nyama McCarthy-​Brown’s (2009) view that educators have an obligation to support the students to realize their full identities in relation to their education so that they can empower, liberate, and transform the self. Martin, Meminah, and Annette’s application of humanizing pedagogy (Salazar 2013) is necessary because in places like the U.S., people of color live in white hegemonic environments (Gans 2012) in which “[o]‌ne ever feels his [her] twoness—​an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder” (DuBois 1903, 46). Hence, teaching African dances can deepen a civic understanding that “black bodies aren’t dumb; they are extensions of black minds—​ intelligent minds—​ in a physical landscape where the Cartesian mind/​body split refused to take hold” (Gottschild 2003, 44). For people in North America, Europe, New Zealand, and Asia, where negative stereotypes about Africa are prevalent, teaching African dances using their inherent pedagogies provides positive perspectives about Africa, as Dorah, who has taught in schools, arts centers, and a university in New York, revealed: When people learn African dances, they can become more culturally and humanly empathetic. They can recognize the ideas, concepts, and experiences that are similar and unite us, and also experience movement and form that might feel “unusual” to our bodies. This broadens their scope of overall being in ourselves, and understanding of others.

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32  Alfdaniels Mabingo Fostering Civic Understanding Through Embodied Dance Experiences and Stories The dance teachers explained that applying pedagogies as civic engagement entails engaging learners in complex transformative embodied experiences offered by the dances. Gordon, who has taught in school, university, and other communities in Europe, stated, Each dance has unique knowledge in the movements, techniques, and gestures. You cannot know the depth and uniqueness of this knowledge and its cultural significance if you do not practically do the dances. For example, the body functions differently in war dances than children’s dance. This reflection underscores that for civic understanding to be meaningfully fostered, the body as a microcosm through which cultural, social, and political nuances are imbedded has to be emphasized as a key agent in pedagogic processes. Some dance teachers such as Olive, who has worked as a teacher of Ugandan dances in communities in Europe, further indicated that a step-​by-​step approach to teaching movements can intelligibly immerse the learners into the intricate movement patterns and meanings of the dances and their attendant cultures: When learners are new, it is important to first demonstrate the basic steps, focusing on each step at a time. This gradually immerses learners into the practice. You can use this to make the learners repeatedly explore the complex movement patterns, structures of the dance, and the dance as a whole. Olive’s observation outlines how paying attention to the dance material can lead to holistic learning. A pedagogy that leverages embodiment allows learners to do, think, discover, feel, question, know, and transform. The embodied exploration of new movement knowledge nourishes civic understanding because the body acts as the conduit through which new experiences are deconstructed, ethnocentrisms are challenged, and new cultural values, philosophical orientations, and kinesthetic behaviors are understood. Because African dances are entwined with music (Nannyonga-​ Tamusuza 2015), some dance teachers indicated that they explore songs and drum rhythms as a way of facilitating embodied knowing. Henry, who has taught at a university in Europe, noted: In Ugandan dances such as Bwola where the movements derive from songs and rhythms, I introduce the songs and drum rhythms

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Teaching African Dances as Civic Engagement 33 first, using clapping, humming, and vocal sounds for learners to understand the meanings, tempo, feeling, and flow. We then practically explore how songs and drum rhythms translate into dance movements and their significance to people and cultures. By experiencing music as dance and dance as music (Nannyonga-​ Tamusuza 2015), learners enter into the dance experiences from the prism of musicality. This challenges them to explore transferability of intricate knowledge between these two ontological and epistemological domains. The learners can use this experience to question, process, reflect on, and deconstruct the dances as complex holistic knowledge that exists in the body, drum rhythms, and songs. When the teachers unpack the meanings of the songs and drum rhythms, learners access nuanced knowledge that transcends kinesthetic action. Martin mentioned, “When I teach Sinte, which is a rhythm for celebration of initiation among Nalu people of Guinea, I tell students the cultural meanings, geographic origins, and relevance of the rhythm to people.” Integrating musicality as an element of dance pedagogy discloses the complex ways through which knowledge in Africa is organized and codified as an integral part of human existence, experience, and realities. In addition to embodied experiences, the dance teachers highlighted sharing the stories that depict the historical, cultural, philosophical, and contextual circumstances in which the dances originate as key in facilitating cultural understanding. Bright revealed: I teach dances based on their cultural etymology. I  find oral literature roots of the movements to be most helpful to students in enabling them to remember, contextualize, understand, and dance knowledge. An example is the story about the origin of Maggunju dance with some of its motifs meant to entertain the baby king of Baganda people of central Uganda and later to create way for the king on his way to the royal regatta. The cultural etymology that Bright alludes to is encompassed in stories that highlight how dance relates to the people, their culture, and their history. The stories form a theoretical frame, which addresses the question of “why the dance is performed, what dance is performed, where the dance is performed, when the dance is performed, who performs the dance and how the dance is performed. They also disclose the changes that have happened in the dances” as Eddie, who has taught in diverse communities in Europe, explained. The stories reveal the meanings behind the movements. When the multifaceted stories are articulated as pedagogic framework, they expand “our views of ourselves and others, our ethics, our values, and

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34  Alfdaniels Mabingo our manners of being and relating, which are instilled in our bodies—​a place where our thoughts and actions are instantiated” (Shapiro 2008a, 262). They form “a pedagogical space in which learners can honor cultural difference while at the same time engage their bodies and minds in historical and cross-​cultural analysis” (Albright 2003, 177). Deepening Civic Understanding Through Dialogues: Why the Learners’ Questions Matter The dance teachers disclosed that engaging in dialogues with learners during teaching and learning processes is central to fostering civic understanding. Particularly, the questions that the learners ask lead to divulging of information, which clarifies the contexts in which the dances are performed and celebrated. The data from the dance teachers showed that the learners ask questions related to the social, geographical, political and cultural set up in Africa. Some of these questions include: Where is Africa found? What percentage of Africa is a jungle? Why does Africa have wars? Why are the skins of Africans black? Do people in Africa wear shoes? Do you have roads in Africa? Do you live with wild animals in Africa? Does Africa have winter? What food do people eat in Africa? Stereotypical as some of these questions might appear, they reveal the learners’ inquisitiveness to gain knowledge about Africa. These inquisitorial questions suggest that using dance pedagogies as civic engagement can be impactful if learners are accorded agency to questions as a way of seeking to know, do, think, and transform. The dance teachers expressed that the other category of questions that the learners commonly ask relates to how people in Africa practice the dances: How long did it take you to learn dances? Who taught you those dances? Does anyone in Africa dance? Is it common for people to learn other dances from different tribes they do not come from? Why would one learn a dance from another tribe? At what age do you start dancing? Allowing learners to bring curiosities into teaching and learning processes allows them to engage African experiences and realities at a deeper level. The questions frame a thought process that searches for understanding of the people as dancers and humans. It further creates space for engagement into conversations that reveal intrinsic

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Teaching African Dances as Civic Engagement 35 information about the African people as bearers of cultural knowledge and celebrants of the dances. The last category included questions that relate to the social, cultural, and political relevance of dances in African communities: Where do the dances come from in Africa? Why do people in Africa dance? Who choreographs these dances? How many dances do you have in Africa? What is the essence of those dances? Why are there so many dances in your country? Why are the dances grounded? Why do most dances use a lot of energy? Why do they play drums and sing in African dances? Why do dances have so many rhythms? Are the costumes still the code of dressing in these communities? Are dances taught in schools? The questions seek the meanings and contexts behind the dances. Answers to these questions allow the learners to understand the position and relevance of dances as sites where issues related to culture and the people are embodied and negotiated. The curiosities that learners bring into pedagogic processes facilitate dialogues, which establish insightful exchange, guide new discoveries, and facilitate positive transformative perceptional and attitudinal shifts. In some instances, the questions that students ask attempt to illuminate their personal and cultural beliefs. Bright observed: Once when I was teaching the Runyege courtship dance, the students asked me questions such as: Can a woman also be the initiator in the find-​a-​mate dance? Why are the girls competing for the attention of the boys, isn’t this so sexist and demeaning to women? Don’t girls deserve a right to say no? What if the one you have danced your heart out for turns you down? What makes these questions appropriate as mechanisms for civic engagement is that they encourage the dance teachers to provide explanations. This enables the learners to engage in critical and conscious reflection to nurture an understanding that values other people’s ways of life. Because the dances encompass cultural forces such as racial, ethnic, class, gender, and religious viewpoints (Dils and Albright 2001), when teachers allow learners to participate in dialogic learning, these learners are able to interrogate their perceptions of and attitudes toward other people, places, and cultures. Such pedagogies that value learners’ questions dispel notions that consider African dances as just kinesthetic and physical activities. Dialogue between learners and the teacher de-objectify the dances and the body in the African dances. They facilitate a process of inquiry that deconstructs knowledge beyond the moving body.

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36  Alfdaniels Mabingo Negotiating Civic Understanding Through Dance: The Learning and Teaching Challenges Fostering civic understanding through teaching African dances can cause challenges. Some dance teachers like Dorah highlighted the learners’ entrenched ethnocentrism and stereotypical sentiments as one of the main challenges: Some students have prior bias cognitively and kinesthetically. Students who are trained in forms such as ballet have challenges with [sensing] weight [effort], body half connections, polyrhythms, isolation, and being grounded towards the earth, which is characteristic of a number of African dances. This ethnocentric inclination to particular techniques can slow the learners’ ability to engage in learning new dances. These biases were also noted to exacerbate the negative perceptions of African dances by some learners, as Annette explained: “When I am teaching Funga Alafia dance, students from Dominican Republic and other countries always say that I am teaching ‘brujeria’ or ‘witchcraft’ in Spanish.” Similarly, Olive shared that “there are students who perceive movements of Baakisimba dance from Uganda to be erotic, sensual, and sexual. So, they hesitate to perform these movements fearing that they will look obscene.” According to these dance teachers, the entrenched ethnocentric viewpoints make it difficult for learners to embody the unique qualities of African dances such as polyrhythms. Mikayla noted: Many learners struggle with polyrhythmic character of the music. They cannot identify central beat, syncopations, and isolations. It is hard for them to listen, sing, and translate these multi rhythms into the body, which is the key defining factor is someone wants to achieve holistic learning through African dances. The aforementioned reflections disclose that dance teachers who use pedagogies of African dances as civic engagement can counter some constraints. Making learners shift from ethnocentric to ethnorelative (Bennett 1993) through embodied, reflective, and experiential activities and processes can cause them to experience denial and defense of difference (Bennett 1993). However, it can also show them the epistemological and artistic complexity of the dances, as the preceding reflection from Mikayla revealed.

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Teaching African Dances as Civic Engagement 37 Moreover, although teachers like Dorah indicated that they use “teaching aids such as audio-​ visual recordings, costumes, music instruments (drums, shakers, harps, calabashes, etc.), books, photographs on the dances and the communities where they originate” to contextualize the dance knowledge, some teachers shared that they face challenges of adapting the dances to environments outside their cultural contexts of practice. Eddie noted, “There are dance movements that derive meaning from specific contexts where the dances are performed. For example, worship dances involve transient trance experiences during religious rituals, which cannot be replicated in dance studios or classrooms.” This highlights the challenge of delivering contextual experiences when dances that are specific to cultures and contexts are adapted to new pedagogic environments. Shapiro (2008b) hinted on this constraint by asking, “Is it African dance if it is performed simply as a dance and no longer as a story of people?” (vii).

Conclusion This chapter critically examines how dance teachers use teaching processes of African dances to nourish civic understanding in varied communities in North America, Europe, New Zealand, and Asia. As hostilities against difference escalate and negative perceptions and stereotypes of Africa become entrenched, the article suggests how teachers of African dances can use embodied, reflective, dialogic, and experiential pedagogies to facilitate civic understanding. Explanation is made of how pedagogy accords learners agency to question stereotypical ethnocentrisms, interrogate the new experiences, imagine new realities, and accept, value, and learn from, through, and about African cultures, practices, knowledges, and experiences. The limitation of this chapter is that it investigated civic understanding from the viewpoint of the dance teachers. Hence, further inquiries can be conducted to study how the learners achieve civic understanding as a result of their active agency in embodied, transformative, reflective, and experiential pedagogic processes of the African dances in ways that transcend stereotypical notions about Africa.

ORCID Alfdaniels Mabingo http://​orcid.org/​0000-​0002-​8255-​7819.

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38  Alfdaniels Mabingo

References Adichie, Chimamanda Ngonzi. 2009. “The Danger of a Single Story.” YouTube video, 19:17. Posted by TED, October 7.  www. youtube.com/​ watch?v=D9Ihs241zeg. Albright, Ann Cooper. 2003. Channelling the ‘Other:’ An Embodied Approach to Teaching Across Cultures.” Research in Dance Education 4 (2):177–​182. doi:10.1080/​1464789032000130390. Banks, Cruz Ojeya. 2010. “Critical Postcolonial Dance Pedagogy:  The Relevance of West African Dance Education in the United States.” Anthropology & Education Quarterly 41:8–​34. doi:10.1111/​j.15481492. 2010.01065.x. Bennett, Milton J. 1993. “Towards Ethnorelativism: A Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity.” In Education for the Intercultural Experience, edited by Michael R. Paige, 21–​71. Yarmouth, ME: Intercultural Press. Buck, Ralph, and Jeff Meiners. 2017. “Contextualizing Dance Education Globally and Locally.” In The Palgrave Handbook of Global Arts Education, edited by Georgia Burton and Margaret Baguley, 35–​ 53. New  York, NY: Macmillan. doi:10.1057/​978-​1-​137-​55585-​4_​3. Creswell, John W. 1998. Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design:  Choosing Among Five Traditions. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Dey, Ian. 1993. Qualitative Data Analysis:  A User-​Friendly Guide for Social Scientists. London, UK: Routledge. Dils, Ann, and Ann Cooper Albright, eds. 2001. Moving History/​Dancing Cultures: A Dance History Reader. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. DuBois, William Edward Burghardt. 1903. The Souls of Black Folk. Chicago, IL: McClurg. Flick, Uwe. 2004. “Triangulation in Qualitative Research.” In A Companion to Qualitative Research, edited by Uwe Flick, Ernst Von Kardorff, and Ines Steinke, 178–​183. London, England: Sage. Gans, Herbert J. 2012. “‘Whitening’ and the Changing American Racial Hierarchy.” Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race 9 (2):267–​279. doi:10.1017/​S1742058X12000288. Giroux, Henry A. 1987. “Literacy and Pedagogy of Political Empowerment.” In Literacy: Reading the Word and The World, edited by Paulo Freire and Macedo Donaldo, 1–​ 20. London, England:  Routledge and Kegan Paul Limited. doi:10.1111/​j.1741-​5446.1988.00061.x. Gottschild, Brenda Dixon. 2003. The Black Dancing Body: A Geography from Coon to Cool. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Huntington, Samuel P. 1992. The Clash of Civilizations? Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute. Kuwor, Sylvanus Kwashie. 2013. “The Impact of Adzido on Black Dance and Cross-​ cultural Education in British Schools.” Review of Human Factor Studies 19 (1):70–​108. Mabingo, Alfdaniels. 2014a. “Teaching East African Dances in Higher Education in the U.S: Reconciling Content and Pedagogy.” Accessed June 12, 2016. www.jedsonline.net/​wp-​content/​uploads/​ 2014/​06/​Mabingo.pdf.

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Teaching African Dances as Civic Engagement 39 Mabingo, Alfdaniels. 2014b. “NYU Dance Education Study Abroad Program to Uganda:  Impact on Work Experiences of Study Abroad Alumni in New  York City.” Research in Dance Education 16 (2):99–​113. doi:10.1080/​ 14647893.2014.950641. Mabingo, Alfdaniels. 2015a. “Integrating Emerging Technologies in Teaching Ugandan Traditional Dances in K-​12 Schools in New York City.” Curriculum Journal 26 (2):313–​334. doi:10.1080/​09585176.2015.1035734. Mabingo, Alfdaniels. 2015b. “Decolonizing Dance Pedagogy:  Application of Pedagogies of Ugandan Traditional Dances in Formal Dance Education.” Journal of Dance Education 15 (4):131–​ 141. doi:10.1080/​ 15290824.2015.1023953. Mann, Chris, and Fiona Stewart. 2002. “Internet Interviewing.” In Handbook of Interview Research: Context and Method, edited by Jaber F. Gubrium and James A Holstein, 603–​628. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Mayen, Gerard. D. 2006. Contemporains du Burkina Faso: Ecritures, Attitudes, Circulations de la Compagnie Salia nï Seydou au Temps de la Mondialisation. Paris, France: L’Harmattan. McCarthy-​Brown, Nyama. 2009. “The Need for Culturally Relevant Dance Education.” Journal of Dance Education 9 (4):120–​ 125. doi:10.1080/​ 15290824.2009.10387396. Mezirow, Jack. 1991. Transformative Dimensions in Adult Learning. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-​Bass. Mezirow, Jack. 1997. “Transformative Learning:  Theory to Practice.” New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education 74:5–​ 12. doi:10.1002/​ ace.7401. Mills, Glendola Yhema. 1997. “Is it is or is it Ain’t:  The Impact of Selective Perception on the Image Making of Traditional African Dance.” Journal of Black Studies 28 (2):139–​156. doi:10.1177/​002193479702800201. Mudde, C. 2012. The Relationship Between Immigration and Nativism in Europe and North America. Washington, DC: Migration Policy Group. Mudimbe, Valentino. Y. 1988. The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and The Order of Knowledge. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Nannyonga-​ Tamusuza, Sylvia. 2015. “Music as Dance and Dance as Music:  Interdependence and Dialogue in Baganda Baakisimba Performance.” Yearbook for Traditional Music 47:82–​ 96. doi:10.5921/​ yeartradmusi.47.2015.0082. Poncian, Japhace. 2015. “The Persistence of Western Negative Perceptions About Africa: Factoring in the Role of Africans.” Journal of African Studies and Development 7 (3):72–​80. doi:10.5897/​JASD2014.0317. Risner, Doug, and Susan W. Stinson. 2010. “Moving Social Justice: Challenges, Fears and Possibilities in Dance Education.” International Journal of Education and the Arts 11 (6):1–​26. Rowe, Nicholas, Rose Martin, Ralph Buck, and Eeva Anttila. 2018. “Researching Dance Education Post-​ 2016:  The Global Implications of Brexit and Trump on Dance Education.” Research in Dance Education 19 (1):91–​109. doi:10.1080/​14647893.2017.1354839. Said, Edward. 1978. Orientalism. New York, NY: Pantheon.

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40  Alfdaniels Mabingo Salazar, Maria del Carmen. 2013. “A Humanizing Pedagogy: Reinventing the Principles and Practice of Education as a Journey Toward Liberation.” Review of Research in Education 37 (1):121–​148. doi:10.3102/​0091732X12464032. Shapiro, Sherry B. 2008a. “Dance in a World of Change: A Vision for Global Aesthetics and Universal Ethics”. In Dance in a World of Change: Reflections on Globalization and Cultural Difference, edited by Sherry B. Shapiro, 253–​ 274. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Shapiro, Sherry B. 2008b. “Preface.” In Dance in a World of Change: Reflections on Globalization and Cultural Difference, edited by Sherry B. Shapiro, vii–​x. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Stock, Cheryl F. 2001. “Myth of a Universal Dance Language:  Tension Between Globalization and Cultural Difference.” In Asia-​pacific Dance Bridge:  Academic Conference, Papers and Abstracts, edited by Stephanie Burridge, 246–​262. Singapore: World Dance Alliance. Walker, La, and Teesa Lanea Ayow. 2016. “Towards Entercultural Engaged Pedagogy:  Revisioning Curricula in University Dance Studies from a Black Dance Aesthetics Approach.” Doctoral dissertation, University of California, Davis. Warburton, Edward. C. 2017. “Dance Marking Diplomacy:  Rehearsing Intercultural Exchange.” Journal of Dance Education 17 (4):131–​ 137. doi:10.1080/​15290824.2017.1292358.

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3  COLLABORATION  n Activity of Responsible A Citizenship Julie A. Mulvihill

Choreography teachers often give collaboration assignments to students. Collaboration is often included in curricula as a kind of choreographic process to learn in and about. Further, collaboration is heralded as an important aspect of the learning environment in dance practice and beyond. Still, it is often not clear whether teachers expect students to use collaboration skills they already have or to learn new ones in some mysterious way merely through forced cooperative work. Indeed, it is often not clear whether “learning to collaborate” is even a focus for teachers beyond using collaboration for assignments. It might be that the sole, or at least the primary, pedagogical aim is that a dance is created that meets certain predetermined requirements for dances, and having students work together is simply a convenient way to deal with a large class, an assignment made to students without direction on the interpersonal and relational dynamics it includes. In the pages that follow, I propose that collaboration skills are not only different from dance-​making skills, but that the former skills are just as important to teach as the latter. This means that if teachers are interested in actually teaching collaboration, specific pedagogical attention needs to be given to collaboration as a set of learnable skills. After all, a collaborative group’s effectiveness in making use of canon, for example, or any other formal device, might not accurately reflect the students’ understanding and use of such collaboration skills as listening to others, honoring suggestions, questioning suggestions, vocalizing feedback, supporting the challenges of voicing among themselves, and recognizing and exploring different perspectives. If such skills are the kinds collaborative work is supposed to develop and strengthen, I suggest they need to be taught, not merely hoped for. Moreover, I suggest that collaboration skills learned in dance-​making contexts are transferable to other contexts; to learn collaboration is to learn vital skills of responsible citizenship.

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42  Julie A. Mulvihill

What and Where is Collaborative Dance Making? The word collaboration is often used to suggest a way of working among people or organizations that might not always be in agreement. The term seems to possess a meaning that includes positioning two or more entities together with the aim of creating a single outcome. One scenario that this definition offers is of negotiations, deal making, debates, and diplomacy; another scenario is of one entity taking over to make all of the decisions yet sharing the credit with another entity. These scenarios are alike with regard to their emphasis of giving something up to achieve productivity. However, as I  describe later, approaching collaboration from the perspective of relational being (as outlined later in this chapter by Kenneth Gergen, John Shotter, and myself) can elicit growth or enlightenment among collaborators; the process is not about loss or even compromise—​it is about discovery. I propose the core concepts of Listening and Being Present and Voice and Bodying as collaboration skill sets that can lead to responsible citizenship in dance-​making settings and beyond. Listening and Being Present encompasses a set of skills that speak to awareness, considered responding, and engaging in the moment. Voice and Bodying includes skills associated with verbal and nonverbal communication, opinion making, and situating meaning. Both of these core concepts are aspects of collaboration as I am outlining it as a pedagogy and contribute to principles of responsible citizenship. In her article on teaching collaborative skills in dance practice, dance educator Karen Schupp (2015) commented, “Empathy, leadership and stewardship, communication, initiation and follow-​through, and negotiation can be implicitly gained through these collaborative opportunities” (154). For the purposes of responsible citizenship, learning about these implicit ideas must become explicit. The value of collaboration as I  propose it is on relationships and exploring the nuances of collective thinking and problem solving. How do teachers focus students into their own behaviors to promote, develop, and examine ideas like Listening and Being Present and Voice and Bodying? How do dance educators grade this? Is this dance practice? As a teacher, I find that a function of dance practice and a pedagogy of collaboration requires that dance makers understand that we are all learning about what it means and how to be responsible citizens. Each evolving rehearsal or classroom situation offers new ways to engage and explore Listening and Being Present and Voice and Bodying as ideas that access responsible citizenship. It is important to note that dance making includes a diverse set of practices. Dances are made in highly improvisational, democratic ways,

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Collaboration 43 and in more traditional top-​down, authority driven ways, and everything in between. Indeed, one dancemaking process might include both improvisational and democratic practices and the exercising of top-​down authority. Sometimes dances are made very quickly, and sometimes they are made over long periods of time. Nevertheless, if collaboration is to be considered at least some of the time in a dance-​ making process, such skills as Listening and Being Present and Voice and Bodying will benefit the process. With these ideas in mind, I propose that rehearsal and other pedagogical spaces in which dances are conceived and worked on are ripe with opportunities to learn and practice Listening and Being Present and Voice and Bodying. To understand how dance makers can develop and strengthen such skills I have extensively explored the ways a group of dance makers1 makes decisions—​a concept I  refer to as Thinking Together. Before turning to an elucidation of the latter concept, it is important to establish rehearsal as a significant pedagogical space.

Rehearsal as a Pedagogical Space Rehearsal is neglected in the literature on teaching and learning dance-​ making, and thus in traditional choreography classes. After all, rehearsal usually, if not always, happens outside of class, away from the teacher, and is likely regarded by choreography students as little else but time and space to put the teacher’s instructions into action and, hopefully, produce something that will satisfy both the teacher’s expectations and the student’s own creative vision. Yet if dance makers are to collaborate, it is in rehearsal where they will attempt to do so. I see rehearsal as a space in which dance makers create and exchange knowledge. They explore and shift identity within the context of the emerging dance. Larry Hickman (1998) wrote of philosopher and educational reformer John Dewey’s theories of inquiry stating, “Dewey identified inquiry as the primary means by which reflective organisms seek to achieve stability through adaptation” (167). Dance makers are confronted with habits as well as new information through exchanges within rehearsal. “Successful living requires an active and ongoing reconstruction of experienced situations,” continued Hickman (1998, 167), indicating inquiry and rehearsal as processes wherein dance makers perpetually reconstitute and adapt to the emergent dance and to one another. The dance makers create a dialogue that both shapes the dance and transforms the dance makers, reinforcing shared knowledge creation. Personal choice as well as agency enactment for dance makers changes the rehearsal process. In considering choices and choice making in this

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44  Julie A. Mulvihill context, it is important to remember the rehearsal process (the activity of choosing) is prioritized over the emergent dance (resultant collection of choices made). Rehearsal is a space where educators can assign certain tools and prompts to be practiced and addressed in learning to make choices and formulating agency to agree or disagree with choices offered by others. It is a space where dance makers can examine how they treat one another, notice where power shifts, and learn how to voice aesthetic and civic principles. It is in rehearsal where dance makers give and take ideas, exchanging knowledge. In dance-​making, knowledge is created and ideas are communicated through embodied experiences and sensory perceptions, and the dance and knowledge emerge from shifts that occur among the dance makers. Nevertheless, knowledge creation can also be presumed without considering the dance, because dance-​making is an interaction with the world; dance makers bring their own experiences, histories, and habits into rehearsal and then they interact and transform one another. Dance making, therefore, expands and amends how and what dance makers individually—​and perhaps collectively—​know beyond the analysis of a final product.2 If relationships between the dance makers are primary, and knowledge is created as individuals communicate and exchange with one another, then collaboration—​that is, Thinking Together—​is of pivotal importance in rehearsal as well as any dance-​making setting in which collaboration is desired.

Thinking Together Common in various performing arts contexts, humanities related research, and used in business models of collaboration, thinking together is defined in multiple ways based on different theories. In researching collaboration among designers for the automobile company Volvo, Andreas Larsson (2003) studied how “objects to think with” might provide common ground for globally distributed teams to create meaning, “thinking together apart.” Specifically for education, Neil Mercer and Karen Littleton (2007), along with Rupert Wegerif and Lyn Dawes, developed a dialogical “thinking together” approach for teaching children. In each of these cases thinking together describes creating meaning as a group. For me, Thinking Together is a collaborative practice that is derived from practical research in my classroom and scholarly research,3 as well as from the philosophy of relational being as framed by theorists Kenneth Gergen (2009) and John Shotter (2010, 2011). Thinking Together prioritizes responsible citizenship and empathetic engagement with others. Two core concepts that introduce

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Collaboration 45 skills of Thinking Together are Listening and Being Present and Voice and Bodying. In exploring Thinking Together skill development, it is important to expand our pedagogy to include rehearsal settings in which a teacher might or might not be present, for the moment-​to-​moment experiences of collaborative practice is where the real challenges and the benefits of collaborative work emerge. Dance theorist Jo Butterworth (2009) helped us to understand differences among five distinct process frameworks for dance-​making, ranging from choreographer as expert to choreographer as collaborator. Butterworth described behavioral norms for dancers and choreographers, defining roles, interactions, and teaching and learning approaches within the range of process models. Yet several of the frameworks on the spectrum might manifest one or more times within a single rehearsal, and the distinction between choreographers and dancers, particularly peers who take on these roles, can shift from moment to moment. Thus as valuable as the model is for understanding different kinds of power dynamics within choreographic processes, there is much more to discover about ways in which power is given or taken, how communication transpires, and how meaning and decisions are made within a group. Relational Being and Dialogue Gergen (2009) wrote about relational being in ways that can be applied to dialogues and collaboration in dance.4 For centuries, philosophers have argued and taught varying ideas of the self as being central and primary in focus, albeit acted on by outside forces. Every action a person makes is calculated to manipulate and arrange the situation toward individual social or economic good fortune. These ideas are what Gergen called bounded being. The focus of bounded being is on the internal revelations of an independent self. It is impossible to understand the inner world of another person because, as outsiders to everyone but ourselves, we never have access to it. This causes distrust and insincerity in relationships, which spurs the vicious cycle of further boundary creation by distancing oneself and othering more deeply. Only inasmuch as the relationship remains useful is it worthwhile; there is always a “threat of expendability” unless we give up bounded being in favor of relational being (Gergen 2009, 17). When we shift the emphasis from the self to the relationship, we value the coactivities of experience, thought, and communication. We invite a rationale for the self as a separate entity only emerging from relationship. Relational being (as opposed to bounded being) is the transaction between the self and others. All mental processes—​reason, memory,

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46  Julie A. Mulvihill motives, and intentions, in addition to emotions and sensations of pleasure and pain—​are relational (Gergen 2009). All actions are interwoven exchanges with others through space and time. Even the most simple or singular actions bend space and time so that the actor relates to others; I  pour myself a glass of wine and am interacting with vintners from France and glass blowers from Italy. Going deeper into action Gergen (2009) wrote, “There are no acts of love, altruism, prejudice, or aggression” that occur in a vacuum (33). My existence is made real by your presence, despite the spatial and temporal distance of our coaction. Coaction, as Gergen (2009) used it and as I apply it to collaboration, is a complex experience weaving communication, cultural context, history, and physical awareness. The coactions of relationships are perhaps most obviously revealed within dialogue—​ spoken, written, and movement. A general definition of dialogue is a spoken or written conversation between two or more people. In developing relational being for myself, I reckon that dialogue can also be seen as an unfolding event with no beginning or ending. This event contextualizes not only a directed subject of conversation, but also a sense of ongoing reformation of language and personal identity for those interacting and is therefore not only a communicative tool but also a function of how thinking occurs. Dialogue, like relational being, emerges because of the presence of a person or experience with which one is conversing. Other people, circumstances, and experiences profoundly influence the potential responses and choices of an individual within a dialogue. Dialogue is pedagogical. It has transformative potential and pulls into itself past dialogues while referencing ideas yet to come simultaneously. It reveals power dynamics, awareness, and sensitivity, pushing participants to be better listeners and clearer communicators. It is an activity that showcases how people come to think together and treat one another. In dance practice, dialogue often occurs in ephemeral, esoteric, and elusive ways but is nevertheless an imperative in classrooms and dance making. Rehearsal is a place to study the possibilities of dialogue and the pedagogical activity of dance makers in relationship. Listening and Being Present There is a need for sensitivity and honesty in dialogue. To honestly seek understanding, one must be open and willing to listen to the ideas of others. Being present is a way of listening physically with the whole body; it is beyond an exercise for the ears. In some ways hearing words, noticing body language, and acknowledging a whole and historied person within the communication are actions that often overlap, collide,

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Collaboration 47 and unfold simultaneously. Therefore, I am enfolding these ideas into one core concept of collaboration, Listening and Being Present. Listening and Being Present involves an attitude of attention and intention that includes an awareness of others as well as a commitment to responding with honesty and courtesy. This is in contrast to reacting out of impulse, dominating, or manipulating another person. Listening and Being Present goes beyond a physical sensation; there is a respect for and awareness of others and of the agency of others as well as a respect for and awareness of self and one’s own potential choices. Listening and Being Present offers several distinct actions for Thinking Together as a pedagogy of collaboration that also outlines principles of responsible citizenship, particularly for rehearsal. Committing to Listening and Being Present asserts sensitivity to the environment and to the other people within the situation; an awareness and compassion for the context is privileged. Verbally and nonverbally, a dialogue is established that both forms to the present while also pulling with it the past; this dialogue navigates previously established meanings in language and gesture while moving through the personal experiences of the participants in the present moment. Listening and Being Present is a way of affirming oneself and others within the dialogue, and it is experienced with directed attention through the senses. Shotter (2011) outlined the sensorial aspect of listening and described the importance of directed attention through being present: [I]‌f we are not present to each other, that person will not hear what we have to say. And that sense of our being present to each other is a felt sense, something we say we can have an “intuition” of. Without it, without being in a relation of joint or reciprocal being with them … We will fail to “get their point.” (199) Dance makers get a sense of the emotional climate of the group and what needs to be explored, discussed, or removed so that the group can continue to move in professionally productive ways that also address the personal and intimate nature of dance making. If we consider the group to be the fundamental organism of collaboration, then Listening and Being Present is key. The point is to maintain a consistent intention to be listening and responding deliberately. Dance makers learn to gauge their emotional attachment to ideas and perhaps how to pause and think before reacting. Gauging emotional attachment is important because dance makers can realize biases, assumptions, and expectations of others and the experience.

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48  Julie A. Mulvihill Listening and Being Present with other dance makers in the group allows an individual to continually configure his or her role and identity in the rehearsal. A dance maker might wonder, “Where am I needed? What strengths do I have to offer this challenge that we are facing as a group? How can I support this ever-​changing process?” Listening and Being Present thus can lead a dance maker to situate himself or herself within the dialogue of rehearsal and incite the dance maker to find ways of asserting his or her voice in relation to the movement and vocal dialogues that are emerging around him or her. In rehearsal, I have found cueing can help remind dance makers to be attentive to themselves as listeners. Practicing somatic philosophies like Alexander Technique, Feldenkrais Method®, or yoga, as well as improvisation techniques among the dance makers additionally promotes a sense of living in the moment and awareness of others even when the group is directed to accomplish a particular challenge. Further, allowing dance makers to have reflection time either privately or with a partner can also help to deepen a sense of Listening and Being Present for the group as a whole. The skills of Listening and Being Present are subjective but nevertheless aspects of rehearsal, of Thinking Together, and of principles of responsible citizenship. They can be addressed as learning objectives and evaluated in a variety of ways. Even simply talking about these skills can sensitize dance makers to pursue compassion and respect in their relationships. Dance educators are encouraged to personalize the skill set as they develop, teach, and practice collaboration with an emphasis on principles of responsible citizenship. Listening and Being Present includes:

• • • • • • • • • • •

Commitment; Openness; Respect; Reflexivity; Sensitivity; Honoring of otherness; Honesty; Adaptation—​willingness to change; Emotional awareness; Putting the group before self and aesthetic; Acknowledging expectations, biases, and prejudices to people and ideas.

These skills are not exclusive to Listening and Being Present but are confluences with other core concepts of Thinking Together. Shotter

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Collaboration 49 (2011) suggested that language is dependent on “specifically vague terms” (201) for people to create meaning together, thereby allowing space to direct attention and account for the particular environment and histories that contribute to each unique dialogue. In this way, Listening and Being Present can be conflated with the next idea, Voice and Bodying. Voice and Bodying Philosophers Judith Bradford and Crispin Sartwell (1997) offered, “what will get understood is not up to me, or my listeners, but is made out of the interactions between them. The meanings of these interactions are set up by the intersections of my history and theirs” (195). Similarly, the acts of voicing and bodying5 open up the relationships among people as their differing histories interact through their bodies. In those interactions, new discoveries are made. Voice and Bodying, as a core concept of collaborative practice and pedagogy, blends vocalizing concerns and possibilities, discerning body language, and honoring gesture and movement as a communicative tool. In rehearsal, dance makers often physically engage in movement generation and design trials with one another. Reflecting verbally together on what is made and then repeating the process again and again can help dance makers to refine their ideas, evaluate how they are working, and estimate how well they are meeting the intention, prompt, or assignment. These discussions might be hearty and heated, as they attempt to understand and make decisions about the dance on the basis of their experiences with the movement trials as well as their bodyings within the group. This challenge ties into the ideas of philosopher Shannon Sullivan (2001), who considered bodies to be activities that are coconstituted with the environment, including other bodies. The idea of bodies as transactional with their environments establishes both bodies and environments as configuring each other and as not capable of existing without each other. Even so, the two remain distinct and separate from each other inasmuch as the dancer is separate from the dance. In her ideas about transactional bodies, Sullivan (2001) placed an emphasis on habits and their adaptability. Habits help people to move through life. They allow us to communicate fluidly and to draw distinctions between what is known and understood and what is not. For Sullivan (2001), it is ideal that habits are formed “with the recognition that new situations and environments will require their modification” (33). Continual transaction with the environment allows habits

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50  Julie A. Mulvihill to become more sophisticated and nuanced; therefore, the transacting body becomes more intuitive to the environment. Even while becoming aware of habits and noticing the ways in which a particular change relies on a particular transaction, people can learn how to make shifts in the environment and in what ways they themselves are shifted. Sullivan (2001) described this as follows: Recognizing the cyclical relationship of control between organism and environment allows humans to ask how they might transform for the better the various impacts that organism and environment have on each other without assuming that human organisms have total control. (47) This relationship suggests a very integrated and enmeshed existence in which the organism shifts the environment and vice versa. Although shifts might be conscious and intentional, a person cannot exert his or her will at all times in domination over an environment; rather, the person and the environment work together. This is not a tit-​for-​tat or cause-​and-​effect relationship. Instead, it is an ingrained weaving of organism and environment, and the confluence is largely imperceptible. The transaction is an always-​giving and always-​taking relationship. For rehearsal, Sullivan’s descriptions of organism–​ environment transaction can easily translate into a collaboration that seeks out an acknowledgment of power dynamics among the dance makers. Dance makers must constantly seek to balance their voices and encourage each other to contribute in order to stimulate the creation of new choices, to strengthen dance-​making possibilities, and to create opportunities for understanding each other. By establishing a conscious habit of exercising Voice and Bodying, even to the point of discussing the ways they are voicing and embodying their thoughts, dance makers create a dialogue that culminates in the making of decisions. The inner world of thinking is constructed and reconstructed by activity with other people and within the environment. Shotter (2010) concluded that for relational being and a “dialogical view of our inner lives, the ‘things’ supposedly contained ‘in’ them are not to be found ‘inside’ us as individuals at all” (74). Rather, dialogue persists in “continuously unfolding relations occurring between ourselves and others (or otherness), in our surroundings” that weave together experiences, histories, situations, and meanings to create a mutual understanding (Shotter 2010, 74). Despite disparity of time and space, cognitive activity is described by relational being theorists as also involving invisible voices from previous

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Collaboration 51 interactions. The voices of teachers, for example, “speak” to us as we engage in activities well beyond the interactions with, or even lives of, our teachers. The words of our teachers are recalled and recontexualized in light of new relationships and circumstances. For Voice and Bodying then, verbal and nonverbal dialogues are steeped in multiple contexts dance makers must seek to honor. For Voice and Bodying within Thinking Together as a pedagogy, it is important to mention that not every dance maker is interested in contributing to emerging dances (or other projects of a collaborative nature). Opportunities to practice the skills of Voice and Bodying are imperative within a pedagogy pursuing principles of responsible citizenship regardless of whether dance makers are inclined to vocalize ideas, generate movement responses, or offer feedback. There are multiple ways to provoke and solicit responses and feedback. Dance makers should be challenged by others and invited to challenge themselves on finding avenues of participation that disrupt their own sensibilities and allow adaptation and growth. The work of collaboration is delicate and principles of responsible citizenship call on dance makers to examine their personal ethics and behaviors in deep ways. Voice and Bodying overlaps with Listening and Being Present as core concepts of Thinking Together. Voice and Bodying includes but is not limited to the following skills:

• • • • • • • •

Recognizing differences among ideas and dance makers; Noticing nuances; Having an opinion; Taking a stand; Discerning when to be silent; Paying attention to one’s own and others’ body language beyond the movement language of the dance; Celebrating diversity and honoring multiplicity of heritage; Discussing to the point of consensus.

A practice of these skills in safe environments might allow students to develop meaningful connections for understanding communication and relationships that will serve them well beyond the dance classroom.

A Pedagogy of Responsible Citizenship For my purpose of outlining Thinking Together as a pedagogy of collaboration that highlights principles of responsible citizenship, knowledge cocreation marks a particular claim of inclusivity and accessibility; it is made by the community for the community and from within the

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52  Julie A. Mulvihill coexperiences of the community. Knowledge must have accessibility and a usefulness in dialogue with society, which is a broader spectrum than the community from which the knowledge emerged. Through this accessibility, knowledge becomes fluid across communities, and there is an ongoing process of approaching meaning through continual exchange. Dance practice and dance education can contribute to discourses on knowledge creation through collaboration and do it in ways that affirm responsible citizenship via the body, illuminating bodying and communication as transformative. Sullivan situated and revealed differences in bodying and differences in understanding bodying as important for refining communication. Gergen (2009) wrote that viewing knowledge from a relational perspective invites people to “appreciate the many and varied claims to knowledge” (205). Sullivan (2001) and Gergen (2009) were both putting forward a way of being in the world that recognizes the potential for a multiplicity of truths and for knowledge that perpetually shifts the nature of those who create it. Knowledge does not simply possess the potential to make change; rather, during the process of creating knowledge, the thinkers are changed. Sullivan (2001) suggested an idea that she called hypothetical construction, transactional communication that invites an honoring of another’s bodying as part of meaning-​making and communication. Hypothetical construction invokes empathy to create the possibilities of meaning making and nondominating communication. Sullivan (2001) wrote, “I cannot assume that I understand another’s bodying correctly, and if I attempt to do so without paying attention to the particularities of others’ bodily activities, I am almost sure to misunderstand” (74–​75). The act of empathy in communication “does not occur when others are only reflections of me back to myself ” (Sullivan 2001, 75). Instead, the effort of imagining myself in your place as you perhaps allows me to see myself as you see me and make adjustments to my own bodying. To disregard myself and take on your identity in order to empathize is never wholly possible and so hypothetical construction is always an approximation and a revelation of my own assumptions. Hypothetical construction stems from listening in a very specific way to another person. Listening and Being Present includes a nuanced understanding of a whole person accounting for history, mood, and present circumstances, which speaks to a pedagogy of collaboration and principles of responsible citizenship as dance makers engage together. Sullivan (2001) continued to say that “[h]‌ypothetical construction, which makes bodily communication explicit, is crucial to prevent the assumption of the familiar in another and thus the misunderstanding of him or her” (82). For Sullivan, assuming and recognizing the familiar

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Collaboration 53 is a failing of communication because it is important to hold differences as central features of transactional communication. She suggested that, “[i]nstead of looking for a bodily core or structure unmarked by differences, one could hold that bodies are constituted by means of transactional bodyings of gender, race, class, age, sexuality, nationality, culture, experiences, and upbringing, and more” (Sullivan 2001, 74). Rather than assume them, there is potential to create similarities together. Similarities are cultivated and nurtured “so that a nondomineering form of coexistence is possible” (Sullivan 2001, 74). Creating similarities within a dialogue seems natural as meaning is created and deepened through communication. Yet, humans often gravitate to what appears to be familiar—​ this is problematic and feeds privilege and power. Utilizing Voice and Bodying in ways that align with Sullivan’s hypothetical construction can facilitate Thinking Together as a pedagogy of collaboration that encourages a challenge of biases and prejudices. Dance makers attempt to work things out together, recognizing differences, creating similarities, and continually acknowledging and shifting power dynamics. Through communicating with and relating to each other, the dance makers are formed and reformed. This process of forming and reforming collaboratively is a knowledge creation process that encompasses Listening and Being Present and Voice and Bodying in such a way that the transactions within relationships—​not the individuals themselves—​ are responsible for thinking and knowledge creation. This is not a negotiation in which compromise involves the forfeiting of one idea to gain another, something being sacrificed or lost to make a deal on behalf of the group, or one individual continually dominating over others. Thinking Together as a pedagogy of collaboration places the group and understanding among its members as the work of the collaborative practice. Listening and Being Present and Voice and Bodying are ideas that engender specific skills that when practiced and honed can foster relationship building and maintenance. These ideas address qualities of responsible living within relationships, in and out of rehearsal spaces.

The Way Forward Rehearsal as an inquiry asks questions of the dance and of the process by which the dance emerges. Dance makers improvise, reflect, edit, adjust, evaluate, and critique the work and the process along the way. The soil of rehearsal is fertile for nurturing Listening and Being Present and Voice and Bodying and exploring principles of responsible citizenship. I hope to develop specific strategies for teaching these core

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54  Julie A. Mulvihill concepts of Thinking Together in future research but in the meantime there are a few existing strategies for reframing roles and affirming dialogical practices that complement a pedagogy of collaboration with a focus on principles of responsible citizenship as I have theorized it in this chapter. In his studies of choreographic teaching practices in higher education, dance scholar and educator Larry Lavender (2009) noted a useful tool he called rehearsal criticism. Because “the focus is on the manner and style of the creation process itself,” rehearsal criticism is not dance criticism (Lavender 2009, 392). Instead, rehearsal critics write about what is observed as the dance is created. In this way, dance makers come to evaluate and make judgments about the work of the rehearsal process as the work of the dance is emerging. The rehearsal experience is adjusted in process and the inquiry shifts. Lavender’s notion of rehearsal criticism is a method of attempting to discover what dance makers are doing and what they think they are doing. Lavender (2009) also offered Creative Process Mentoring (CPM) as a tool for shifting the pedagogy of a choreography class from results-​ based criticism to creativity as a dialogical practice.6 He wrote, “Creative Process Mentoring is a dialogical approach to refining meta-​cognitive skills by clarifying blurry relationships among artistic intentions, in-​ studio practices, and emergent artistic forms and meanings” (Lavender 2009, 389). CPM enhances attention to the making process and provokes dance makers to uncover more and different possibilities in relation to the emerging and developing dance idea. Rehearsal criticism and CPM provide for recognition of habits within the dance-​making practice. Allowing habits and relational dynamics to surface in the rehearsal process is a way for dance makers to distinguish choices and enact agency in many ways. In his research, Lavender was specifically working with choreo­ graphers who were not dancing in their own works. He described, “It rapidly became clear that each choreographer had a distinct (and nearly always unconscious) approach to soliciting, prompting, manipulating, and directing performers’ contributions” (Lavender 2009, 391). The assumption of relational dynamics as a factor in rehearsal is likely relevant for many kinds of dance-​making practices and is charged with issues of power and perception in communication. Dance educator Nina Martin (2017) also laid out strategies she has found useful for beginning dance improvisation classes that also align with Thinking Together as a pedagogy that outlines principles of responsible citizenship. Her strategies include scores that seek to challenge students’ thinking to focus on the activity of problem solving within the dance-​making context of improvisation. These scores are

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Collaboration 55 fast-​paced, timed exercises wherein an improvising dancer is witnessed by a nondancing observer. The observer interrupts the improviser when movement patterns emerge, allowing both the dancing and nondancing students to recognize ingrained choreographic choices and habituated movement sequences. By using these scores, which she called the Chaos of Intention and Chaos of Ideas scores, Martin (2017) suggested “students realize that concentrating on problem solving leaves no time for the unhelpful activities of second guessing the past, judging the present, or planning what to do in the future” (30). These activities engage the students in keeping the dance-​making intention as the focus as well as allowing students to practice being curious and reflexive in ways that positively recognize bias and habit while also undermining defensive relational behavior. In my own dance-​making practices, I use reinforcement. Similar to a check-​in, reinforcement is an opportunity for dance makers to express and reflect on significant moments in the process after each rehearsal. The parameters of reinforcement are open but must be able to fit into the sentence: I would like to reinforce …. Dance makers use this tool to point out moments of learning for themselves, set up a boundary, or remember a joke from that rehearsal. For reinforcement, dance makers gather in a circle together. Sometimes each dance maker contributes to reinforcement, whereas other times there are just a few responses. Dance makers sit for a rather long time, sometimes in silence, and honor the opportunity to reinforce and support ideas regardless of whether any are offered. Sometimes someone will reinforce an idea and another dance maker reinforces the opposite; the activity is set up to allow opposing viewpoints to coexist. Reinforcement provides good information to celebrate or address at the next rehearsal when dance makers can strategize together on how to do things differently or better for the group. Setting about to consciously include Listening and Being Present and Voice and Bodying as skill sets necessary for rehearsal, dance practice, and life in general embraces a commitment to responsible citizenship as fundamental for pedagogy. Dance makers communicate with each other; dance educators can affect that communication and encourage dance makers to build and maintain honest, respectful, compassionate, and professional relationships with fellow dance makers. Listening and Being Present and Voice and Bodying are ideas and skills that require practice and sustenance even for the most experienced practitioner. The way forward includes the forming and reforming of ourselves as educators in ways that embrace our consciously lived notions of responsible citizenship as we collaborate with our students and encourage them to collaborate with each other.

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Notes 1 I refer to students, teachers, assistants, and others who participate in the pedagogical space as dance makers. 2 The work of many cognitive scientists and psychologists supports knowledge creation as an individual’s integration, overlap, and harmonious living with the world. 3 See Dance Making:  The Work and Working of Collaboration, a dissertation by Julie A.  Mulvihill (2017a), and “Thinking Together:  Collaborative Practice as a Process of Knowledge Creation” Julie A. Mulvihill (2017b). 4 Relational being is a philosophical concept used by many theorists. My understanding, as well as Kenneth Gergen and John Shotter’s use of the concept, is heavily influenced by philosopher Mikhail M. Bakhtin (1990). 5 Bodying is a term borrowed from Shannon Sullivan (2001) that describes how human behavior, thought, and experience are revealed and discovered through the body. 6 Results-​based criticism is feedback generated about a dance after it is viewed. This kind of criticism generally aids viewers in deciding what is “good” (and not) about a dance as well as whether the dance is “good” or not after the dance has been created and showcased.

References Bakhtin, Mikhail M. 1990. Art and Answerability: Early Philosophical Essays by M.M. Bakhtin, edited by Michael Holquist and Vadim Liapunov. Translated by Vadim Liapunov. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Bradford, Judith, and Crispin Sartwell. 1997. “Voiced Bodies/​ Embodied Voices.” In Race/​sex:  Their Sameness, Difference, and Interplay, edited by Naomi Zack, 191–​203. New York, NY: Routledge. Butterworth, Jo. 2009. “Too many cooks? A Framework for Dance Making and Devising.” In Contemporary Choreography: A Critical Reader, edited by Jo Butterworth and Liesbeth Wildschut, 177–​194. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. Gergen, Kenneth J. 2009. Relational Being. New  York, NY:  Oxford University Press. Hickman, Larry A. 1998. “Dewey’s Theory of Inquiry.” In Reading Dewey: Interpretations for a Postmodern Generation, edited by Larry Hickman, 166–​ 186. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Larsson, Andreas. 2003. “Making Sense of Collaboration:  The Challenge of Thinking Together in Design Teams.” Accessed August 1, 2018. www. researchgate.net/​publication/​220729084. Lavender, Larry. 2009. “Dialogical Practices in Teaching Choreography.” Dance Chronicle 32 (3):377–​411. doi:10.1080/​01472520903276735. Martin, Nina. 2017. “Spontaneous Dancemaking with Beginning Impro­ visers:  Foundational Practices in Presence, Stillness, and Problem Solving.” Journal of Dance Education 17 (1):27–​30. doi:10.1080/​15290824.2016.1228107. Mercer, Neil, and Karen Littleton. 2007. Dialogue and the Development of Children’s Thinking: A Sociocultural Approach. New York, NY: Routledge.

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Collaboration 57 Mulvihill, Julie A. 2017a. “Dance Making:  The Work and Working of Collaboration.” PhD diss., Texas Woman’s University. Mulvihill, Julie A. 2017b. “Thinking Together:  Collaborative Practice as a Process of Knowledge Creation.” ATI Exchange Journal (Summer 2017):44–​55. Schupp, Karen. 2015. “Teaching Collaborative Skills Through Dance: Isolating the Parts to Strengthen the Whole.” Journal of Dance Education 15 (4):152–​ 158. doi: 10.1080/​15290824.2015.1039643. Shotter, John. 2010. Social Construction on the Edge:  Withness-​Thinking and Embodiment. Chagrin Falls, OH: Taos Institute Publications. Shotter, John. 2011. Getting it:  Withness-​ Thinking and the Dialogical…In Practice. New York, NY: Hampton Press, Inc. Sullivan, Shannon. 2001. Living Across and Through Skins: Transactional Bodies, Pragmatism and Feminism. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

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4  Laying New Ground Uprooting White Privilege and Planting Seeds of Equity and Inclusivity Crystal U. Davis Whiteness is still in full bloom, with deep roots invisible to many. With Whiteness so pervasive that we see no other variations, it becomes a canopy so large that it blocks the light that feeds new growth. As White supremacy lurks around every corner, we do not have the fuel, the nutrients, or the cleared ground to grow in a new way. We will not be able to envision a new social structure that upends the stranglehold of Whiteness and activates us all as fully engaged citizens. We will not be able to lay more equitable groundwork if Whiteness does not relinquish power and privilege. As an African American dancer and Laban-​Bartenieff Movement Analyst who has taught in Pre-K–​12 and higher education settings for the past fourteen years, I have chosen to pull from my own experiences to make visible how Whiteness affects Black bodies. My focus in this chapter is not to create a space to celebrate the contributions of Black dancers to the field in the countless and sometimes untold examples, but instead to highlight how Whiteness operates in dance. It is important to emphasize the use of the term Black bodies as opposed to Black dancers, choreographers, teachers, and so on, because the intersection of a Black body in any role affects the way Black people navigate the landscape of dance. Although dancers of color or other marginalized groups in dance might resonate with aspects of this subject, I choose to keep my focus narrow to remain clear and to avoid the complexities of intersectionality that require a much longer and involved examination. But what do I mean by Whiteness, and how does it present in the field of dance education? Whiteness is a complex, ever-​changing, and adapting social construct that, when paired with the identity politics and cultural histories operating in the United States, results in racial inequity. There are myriad definitions of Whiteness that intertwine to create a patchwork for this omnipresent social phenomenon. Some of these definitions include Nell Painter’s (2010) presumed “European,” light skin associated with a

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Laying New Ground 59 collection of phenotypic features considered to be a “pure” and superior racial category of humanity. Ruth Frankenberg’s (1997) definition speaks to Whiteness’s manifestation as universalized standard by which other racial groupings are judged. Yet another definition of Whiteness as defined by Julian Carter (2007) is a group of cultural values that are established as “the norm” that enable the experiences of White people to be viewed as ordinary. George Lipsitz (2006) approached the definition from a political and economic viewpoint of Whiteness wherein economic, political, and social advantages are race-​based and benefit White people. Last, yet not exhaustive, is the definition of Whiteness offered in Birgit Rasmussen’s (2001) work that defines it as an institutional structure established through colonialism that accumulates resources and power for White people. With such a long list of defining features, it is important to address that Whiteness might seem too amorphous or imprecise to pin down. I  would invite readers to instead orient their frames to the ability of Whiteness to be, as Jarod Sexton (2008) stated, “supple, elastic, expansive, ambiguous, continually altered and bringing in new elements” (193). Whiteness is adaptive, ever-​changing, and constantly in motion to maintain its defining and essential feature of benefiting White people. The ways in which Whiteness manifests in the field of dance are even  more varied than the working definitions I  have provided. For a deeper dive on the ways in which Whiteness operates in dance, the Palgrave Handbook on Race and Arts Education book chapter, “Tendus and Tenancy:  Black Dancers and the White Landscape of Dance Education,” (Davis and Phillips-​Fein 2018) addresses in more depth how Whiteness presents itself in the fields of dance and dance education. The metaphor Jesse Phillips-​Fein and I  use to encompass the inequity and exclusion we witness in these fields is one of land ownership. We assert in the chapter that Black bodies are not afforded full access to ownership rights in the field of dance, but rather operate under a tenancy as renters, whereas Whiteness is the homeowner of the institutions, policies, and cultural norms of the field.

The Power of Language and Terminology One way Whiteness institutionally presents in the field of dance is through terminology. So many of us as dance educators and scholars are aware of the struggle, for example, with what to call ballet, modern, and contemporary dance forms primarily performed on proscenium stages by predominantly White dance companies. “Western,” an adjective commonly used to describe Eurocentric dance forms, often excludes hip hop, a dance form also developed in the Western hemisphere. The incorrect categorization is a familiar act of bias. Although the term

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60  Crystal U. Davis “Black dance” exists, as Thomas DeFrantz (2002) reminded us, “White dance” is not a term used in the field. How do we speak about dances that do not fit the unnamed category of White dance? In addition to Black dance, to categorize dances excluded from the unmarked White dance category, we have used terms like those mentioned by Susan Foster (2009), such as “ethnic dance” and “world dance.” In instances like these, institutional ideologies of Whiteness establish ballet and modern dance as the universal standards. As Joann Kealiinohomoku (2001) alluded, with terms like Western dance, ethnic and cultural origins go unnamed, whereas the dance forms of Black bodies include mention of racial or ethnic signifiers detailing the locations of origin.

Curriculum and Pedagogy A second way Whiteness is a factor is in the construction of curriculum. Although there are dance programs that are attempting to clear a path through the dense overgrowth of Whiteness, dance curricula in educational institutions have historically centered around ballet and modern. These two forms make up a larger majority of the mandatory curricular credits required, and a variety of other dance forms count toward fewer credits in the course of study or are electives not seen as mandatory or essential to the development of dancers in the U.S. Also present in consideration of what dance forms are deemed acceptable for elective status is the ability for a dance form to adhere to the pedagogical format of ballet. This is a third way Whiteness manifests in dance. Through this process of assimilation, forms other than ballet and modern often adhere to the structure best explained by Brenda Dixon Gottschild (2003) and summarized as, “the students stand in lines facing the teacher; the teacher demonstrates; the student copies. Steps are broken down into small chunks and explained; the teacher corrects; the student emulates and incorporates” (Davis and Phillips-​Fein 2018). This pedagogical structure also involves the teacher feeding information and knowledge to the students, transferring knowledge into the minds and onto the bodies of students, thereby modeling Paulo Freire’s (2005) problematic “banking” model. Freire (2005) explained that the banking model “attempts to control thinking and action, leads women and men to adjust to the world, and inhibits their creative power” (77). Not only is this pedagogical format problematic for the reasons Freire asserted, but this format is also not the structure all dance forms adhere to in their local cultural contexts, nor is it necessarily an effective method. Dance teachers such as Glenna Batson (2008, 135)  speak of new developments in somatics, dynamic systems, and other fields of research that have begun to assert the argument for new approaches.

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Laying New Ground 61 For this reason, I  support the potential that somatic practices offer when somatic practitioners are attentive to the issues Whiteness presents in the classroom. Unfortunately, the pedagogical model established through ballet training is a delivery mechanism that reifies the pedagogical approach established by ballet technique. Instead of accepting diverse methodologies of content delivery in dance studios, we dance educators often accept only those methods that look most like methods with which we are most familiar or have accepted as most professionally amenable to student training and education. We also tend to hire dance colleagues whose training looks most like ours and whose credentials are understandable within Eurocentric standards of expertise.

Evaluation, Values, and Aesthetics: A Laban Lens Another area that Whiteness affects is student evaluation in dance education. There are a number of ways in which applying Eurocentric rubrics built on modern or ballet dance aesthetics and standards result in devaluing dance forms not aligned with these aesthetic markers of success. Even evaluative methods that extend beyond ballet and modern specifically can have negative effects if the cultural context of the evaluative method or the evaluator as an individual is not acknowledged as culturally specific. Take, for example, the integration of Laban Movement Analysis into the evaluation process some programs have implemented and our ability to observe, articulate, and assess student movement. The idea that a system developed in the context of European movement forms, cultures, and aesthetics can be applied universally to the diversity of bodies, movement forms, and aesthetic constructs in U.S.  dance programs is a formidable assumption. As a certified Laban-​Bartenieff Movement Analyst, I  value and often use concepts from this system in my classroom in addition to other systems of analysis and evaluation in use in dance education. My argument is that no matter the system of evaluation and analysis, we must think twice about applying assumptions of any one system’s universality broadly instead of contextualizing it in its cultural context. Take, for example, from Peggy Hackney’s (2000) work, the assertion that movement is an expression of internal feelings to the outside world. In Maya Deren’s (1983) work on Haitian Vodou dance, she articulated a way in which movement expression is the result of divine possession. In this example, movement expression is not that of the dancer’s internal feelings, but instead that of another entity or being. Although Laban’s intent was to apply to all human motion and any movement of all cultures, it is important to recognize its European roots. Both Deren’s and Hackney’s beliefs are valid and applicable within dance classrooms. For dance

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62  Crystal U. Davis students, it is necessary to acknowledge both the origins and the context for culturally defined, theoretical assertions about human movement. In our classrooms, how many other unarticulated movement philosophies are our students entering our classrooms with that we do not honor or acknowledge? What might our classrooms look like if we developed ways of helping students articulate their own philosophies and approaches to movement in addition to our introductions to those movement theories prominent in the dance field currently? If we establish evaluation around one set of assumptions, when a dance form or creative work centers around a different set of assumptions, we set our students up for failure. In addition to the philosophical principles of Laban Movement Analysis, the depth at which a “neutral” lens of observation is not possible and how our biases inform our analysis must be examined more closely. Although works like Carol-​Lynne Moore and Kaoru Yamamoto’s (1988) Beyond Words: Movement Observation and Analysis address prejudice and the process through which we decipher and make meaning of movement in a general sense, we must begin to be more specific in addressing bias in our analysis. Whiteness is incredibly influential in determining our frame and the lens with which we view the world and each other. It is imperative to begin to make visible specific racial biases, assumptions, and narratives embedded in our experiences. One small way to make these issues visible is to speak explicitly to one’s positionality as observer. Positionality developed through the privileges, oppressions, and interpretations of each individual’s life experience can potentially reinforce racial biases. The more information provided about the observer’s personal position as it relates to his or her life experiences and preferences, the clearer biases and assumptions become for those who receive the observer’s analytical findings. Ozlem Sensoy and Robin DiAngelo (2012) explicated that biases surface and are inextricably linked to creating meaning and determining value when observing the world and by extension the bodily movement of students. Transforming racial biases from implicit assumptions into explicit paradigms is the first step to disrupting them. A  lack of recognition that Eurocentric assumptions are not universal truths can generate biased assessments of non-​White dancers or even “microaggressions” when assessing Black dancers (Sue 2010). Microaggressions, as explained by Derald Wing Sue (2010), are “the brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, and environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial … slights and insults to target the person or group” (5). Racial microaggressions are a result of an individual’s assumptions about some “truth” that is often not a truth at all, but rather a residual effect of the lens Whiteness has created with which to view the world.

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Administration in Education The relationship dynamic between administrators and educators is also affected by Whiteness. It is an admittedly complicated balance. How, in a world still very much attuned to the established values of colonialist tropes, does an institution “sell” itself as valuable without the narrative of elitism? So often what is valued in the construct of high art and low art is an exclusive, elite, predominantly White aesthetic aligned with ballet or modern dance forms. Without educators having an understanding and language to name White aesthetics not as universal but instead as White, educators will continue to reinforce exclusivity and inequity present in dance education with or without an intent to do so. Reifying the works of predominantly White ballet and modern dance companies, choreographers, and teachers as the universal standard of excellence results in inequities and alienation in our classrooms. Educating administrators about this phenomenon is the weeding needed to dismantle the grip of Whiteness in the field of dance education.

Implementation in Policy and Curriculum This is where the privileges Whiteness grants White people, also known as White privilege, can be used to dismantle the inequity and marginalization of Black dancers and educators. In the summoning of a metaphorical groundwork established at the start of this article, this is the point at which we use the uprooted vestiges of Whiteness to clear the land to create space for a new landscape. Although Whiteness still affords White voices more validity and exposure, White people are crucial in this work. Without the gravitas of White voices naming the structures, language, and incidents where Black voices, aesthetics, bodies, and assessment models are diminished, dismissed, or marginalized, the process will be a slow and alienating one for Black dancers. Further changes I  suggest include developing self-​ critical and comprehensive curricula for dance education from pre-​ K through higher education that work to interrupt the grip of Whiteness on our institutions. In this plan, critical elements involve ensuring no single dance form is more valued than others, including forms categorized as popular, vernacular, or social. Also essential to address and revisit throughout curricula is the question, “What is dance?” European dance forms must be decentralized both in curricula and studios, generating a shift in the way information is introduced that defines each form. Every dance form should be examined within its own historical and cultural context and not separate from that context. Separating ballet, for example, from its European roots and asserting it as the foundation of all Western dance forms with very little exploration of other influential

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64  Crystal U. Davis forms should be avoided. Examples of more integrated curricula might include examinations of ballet for its European roots and the historical context of its beginnings, hip hop for its U.S. roots and the historical context of its beginnings, and the history of both forms spreading to other parts of the globe. Underrepresented pedagogies and dance forms should have both equal permanency and number of hours required in the curricular plan as those currently well-​represented forms. A  result of this requirement includes hiring changes wherein dancers with expertise in an underrepresented dance form but with no technical training in Western dance forms are afforded equivalent hiring packages as those with training in Western dance forms. I also assert it is imperative to hire not only Black dancers, but dancers of all underrepresented ethnic backgrounds and racial identities into permanent positions instead of guest artist opportunities. Although all of this sounds wonderful if not daunting, what might it really look like in practice? The following examples are seeds to be planted as we continue to uproot Whiteness in dance education. The hope is that with insistent attention to uprooting practices, beliefs, and policies that maintain the hold Whiteness has on the field of dance education and planting new seeds of inclusive, equitable, racially diverse programs, we will alter the landscape of our institutions of dance and dance education.

Implementation in Pre-​K–​12 Schools One example of this shift in a Pre-​K–​12 school setting is a curriculum I developed in a private, coed middle school setting with student demographics of 60.9  percent White and 15.0  percent African American (Niche 2018). The dance experience of students ranged from those who had never taken dance and were simply curious to those taking sixteen hours a week of dance at a competition-​focused dance studio. Because dance was not offered at the school in the grades immediately leading up to middle school, students did not have a collective practice or understanding of various dance forms. The curriculum involved a creative process wherein students created their own work around a social justice topic of their choice. Students in this program consisted of separate sixth-​, seventh-​, and eighth-​grade elective forty-​five-​minute class sessions that met once a week and one forty-​five-​minute session with sixth-​to eighth-​grade classes combined into one class session. My intention in this model was to reinforce skills in the dance creative process that supported social justice activism. I intentionally encouraged as much student agency as possible throughout the process. Although I did adhere to a warmup that mostly aligned with the previously mentioned ballet-​centered pedagogy at the

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Laying New Ground 65 beginning of the semester, I gradually integrated a variety of movement phrases and somatic movement experiences into the warmup in response to movement challenges I saw students having in their own phrase work. The intention in starting with a ballet-​centered structure was to meet those who had extensive studio dance backgrounds where they were to bring them along for the transition into more unfamiliar territory. As the warmup was the place of entry into the class from such a broad array of student dance backgrounds, I was mindful to pull from various dance forms and somatic exercises that both provided variety in student exposure to dance and served the movement needs of students. I facilitated introductory games and activities to introduce students to how they would collaboratively choose one group topic for the dance. The games included challenges such as finding what three completely unrelated objects had in common with no frame of reference or definitive answers to the challenge. Other games were pulled from theater sources like Augusto Boal’s (1979) book, Theatre of the Oppressed. Students did not vote on a topic selection after brainstorming ideas but instead were tasked with finding points of commonality between each other’s ideas. I call this the consensus process. It is a crucial part of the process, as it does not reinforce the majority rules model, but instead opens the possibility that there is common ground in which everyone can have room for their voices and perspectives. The final topics the dances addressed were broad but had room for each student’s point of connection and investment in the chosen subject matter. Students worked in groups developing and researching ideas, creating movement phrases, and combining and editing movement phrase work all connected to the topic students selected. The next step in the creative process was having the group select a narrative arc they felt best communicated their message, again working on consensus, not on majority rules. Then, students worked together to organize the chosen content into a full dance, rehearsed and gave each other feedback, and performed the dance. Finally, students did a video reflection interview process where they assessed their strengths and challenges throughout the creative process. I edited the video footage, and presented each class’s video reflection the day of the performance to further educate the audience about student successes and challenges during the creative process. Key components of this process that work to upend Whiteness in the dance curricula include students determining the dance form of their choosing for the dance piece, some even including a combination of forms. It was essential to my role as facilitator to meet students with critical and self-​reflective questions relating to how the politics of racial identity, cultural assumptions, and social hierarchical power structures affected their creative process and their assumptions about the movement itself. Also crucial was introducing at the beginning of

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66  Crystal U. Davis the semester and maintaining a continued dialogue throughout the class about the big question: “What is dance?” This element of the curriculum expanded possibilities for students to consider and to interrupt cultural biases, microaggressions, or racial biases that reified White privilege in the classroom. There were also class sessions discussing different dance genres that were steeped in the cultural and historical context of the dance form, not on one form standing in as universal. When appropriate in discussions about race, which were a central component of our discussions around social justice, I  would share my relationship with respect to my racial identity. It was important to be explicit about what dance forms I affined with culturally and what forms I learned that were not from my own cultural and historical background. This process of naming my racial and cultural context modeled for students ways in which they could speak their own truths about their own cultural and racial backgrounds and affinities with various dance forms. This model was not one of Freire’s “banking” model. Rather, students sustained curiosity, self-​examination, critical analysis, and a collaborative environment throughout the process (Friere 2005). A  particular investment in negotiating critical analysis and collaboration took place on the days when sixth to eighth graders were in class together. Students relished giving feedback to those in grades with which they rarely had contact. If you can, imagine the thrill for sixth graders to suggest to eighth graders that they improve various elements of their eighth-​grade dance. This activity broke down the hierarchy between older grades and younger grades. Throughout the semester I  varied the ways students learned movement, another key component of interrupting the models and standards Whiteness has reified in dance spaces and places. In addition to learning movement including postmodern, African diasporic dance forms, Indian dance forms, and hip hop from me in the imitation model via the warmup, students were tasked with manipulating phrases I provided. They also developed their own movement, taught each other movement, were given small movement scores to develop movement, and proposed movement ideas to each other to enhance elements of their own phrase work. Although this particular curriculum was constructed for middle school, I  have used modified versions of this process for second to fourth graders and high school students to develop their own works around some age-​appropriate subject matter relating to personal agency and community engagement.

Implementation in Higher Education Another potential curricular seed to plant that serves to disrupt Whiteness in dance education comes from a higher education setting.

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Laying New Ground 67 I  had the privilege of working at a small, predominantly White private college with above-​average racial diversity of 33.9 percent Black or African American and 54.8 percent White undergraduate student ratio (College Factual 2018). This program has an undergraduate Bachelor of Arts dance program that accepts students with no prior training in dance before entering college. This program believes deeply in inclusivity. Somatic movement and contemporary technique classes are required. Although somatic movement practice is regarded as a predominantly White field, this program uses somatic movement courses as a mode of increasing inclusivity in the program. This approach encourages students to apply internal movement awareness and an understanding of physics, anatomy, and mindful choice-​making to a number of dance forms. This methodology is applied as a way to avoid evaluation of student growth solely via external measures and to avoid some of the pitfalls of personal biases toward the aesthetics of any one dance form. The program restructured the course listings and requirements, making ballet an elective dance tradition alongside all forms that were not considered contemporary technique. I argue that all forms should have equal standing in the curriculum, but the inclusive nature of the program is a step toward planting seeds of change, allowing those who have an interest and even a passion for dance, but might not have been afforded the opportunity to participate in dance classes. The program is one of collaboration and agency wherein the students are elected by dance program students into roles on the dance company board of directors. The racial diversity of the dance company board of directors was a testament to the inclusive nature of the dance program, with 45 percent Black or African American and 55 percent White representation. This student representation is the critical component in the dance program that, when combined with student voices and agency relating to identity politics and cultural biases, interrupt Whiteness. In the various capacities as board members, students are responsible for executive leadership, fundraising, community outreach, advertising and promotion, producing all concerts and performances, managing studio space reservations, and recruitment. An example of how student voice and agency relating to racial identity politics and cultural bias interrupt Whiteness is evident in the improvisation course. This course has both postmodern-​oriented jam sessions and hip hop ciphers as requested by the students. The dialogue across racial difference in ways that hold space and honor cultural and racial diversity in the curriculum and in program leadership and decisions is one step toward a more racially inclusive and equitable dance environment.

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68  Crystal U. Davis While teaching West African dance traditions in this program, I  framed the class for the students as an opportunity for me to share what I  have learned of dances that are not part of my ethnic background. In the class, we broke down in explicit terms the false assumption that because I am Black, I would be able to embody West African dances with ease. I  created assignments in which students examined, through video and guest artists, the ways in which my body and their own bodies were unsuccessful at embodying some of the nuance of the movement and how we might be able to work to improve our skill in the technique. Students also learned of the historical and cultural context of the dances learned in the class. I also distinguished between traditional and contemporary movement phrases to make visible that culture is not static or fixed, but instead lives, breathes, and changes over time.

Conclusion It is important to note that there is no one right answer on how to usurp the effects of Whiteness in our institutions of dance education. Not only is there no singular formula, but it is also important to restate the ability for Whiteness to shift, adapt, and re-​form to maintain its power and privilege. For this reason I  have intentionally separated the curricular explanations from the living and breathing methods I used to interrupt Whiteness in the dance classroom. Responses to how Whiteness manifests should be as local and specific to the conditions present in each organization or program as are the plants we plant in our yards. What is crucial to note is that inclusivity without explicitly naming Whiteness when it presents is not an inclusive environment at all. Dance education needs honest, critically examined, and mediated discussions about policy to take place wherein White people in the room listen deeply and carefully to the experiences, suggestions, and perspectives of Black dancers and educators. After that deep listening, White allyship is needed in the next steps of advocating for change in our institutions of learning. This advocacy would maintain a balance where student-​c entered, inclusive education models also allow for educators, administrators, and other community members to step in and actively name the insidious effects of unexamined Whiteness in teaching practices. Allyship includes disrupting microaggressions, White privilege, and racial and cultural biases that present themselves in dance classrooms, curriculum, and assessment models. Then and only then can dancers and dance educators begin to move toward policies and structures that dismantle the marginalization of Black dancers and offer an equal seat at the table for a

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Laying New Ground 69 broader collection of Black voices, pedagogies, movement forms, and aesthetics.

References Batson, Glenna. 2008. “Teaching Alignment.” In The Body Eclectic: Evolving Practices in Dance Training, edited by Melanie Bales and Rebecca Nettl-​ Fiol, 134–​152. Urbana and Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press. Boal, Augusto. 1979. Theatre of the Oppressed. Translated by Charles A. and Maria-​Odilia Leal McBride. New York, NY: Theatre Communications Group. Carter, Julian B. 2007. The Heart of Whiteness: Normal Sexuality and Race in America, 1880–​1940. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. College Factual. 2018. “College Racial Demographic Information.” Accessed August 1, 2018. www.collegefactual.com/​colleges. Davis, Crystal, and Jesse Phillips-​Fein. 2018. “Tendus and Tenancy:  Black Dancers and the White Landscape of Dance Education.” In The Palgrave Handbook on Race and the Arts in Education, edited by Amelia M. Kraehe, Rubén Gaztambide-​Fernández, and B. Stephen Carpenter II, 571–​ 584. New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan. DeFrantz, Thomas F. 2002. Dancing Many Drums:  Excavations in African American Dance, vol. 19. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. Deren, Maya. 1983. Divine Horsemen:  The Living Gods of Haiti. New  York, NY: McPherson & Company. Foster, Susan, ed. 2009. Worlding Dance (Studies in International Performance). New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan. Frankenberg, Ruth, ed. 1997. Displacing Whiteness:  Essays in Social and Cultural Criticism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Friere, Paulo. 2005. Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 30th Anniversary ed. New York, NY: Continuum. Gottschild, Brenda Dixon. 2003. The Black Dancing Body: A Geography from Coon to Cool. New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan. Hackney, Peggy. 2000. Making Connections:  Total Body Integration Through Bartenieff Fundamentals. New York, NY: Routledge. Kealiinohomoku, Joann. 2001. “An Anthropologist Looks at Ballet as a Form of Ethnic Dance.” In Moving History/​Dancing Cultures:  A Dance History Reader, edited by Ann Dils and Ann Cooper Albright, 33–​43. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. Lipsitz, George. 2006. The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Moore, Carol-​Lynne, and Kaoru Yamamoto. 1988. Beyond Words: Movement Observation and Analysis. New York, NY: Gordon and Breach. Niche. 2018. “Private School Demographic Information.” Accessed August 1, 2018. www.niche.com. Painter, Nell Irvin. 2010. The History of White People. New  York, NY:  WW Norton & Company. Rasmussen, Birgit Brander, Irene J. Nexica, Eric Klinenberg, and Matt Wray, eds. 2001. The Making and Unmaking of Whiteness. Durham, NC:  Duke University Press.

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70  Crystal U. Davis Sensoy, Ozlem, and Robin DiAngelo. 2012. Is Everyone Really Equal? An Introduction to Key Concepts in Social Justice Education. New  York, NY: Teachers College Press. Sexton, Jarod. 2008. Amalgamation Schemes: Antiblackness and the Critique of Multiracialism. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Sue, Derald Wing. 2010. Microaggressions in Everyday Life: Race, Gender, and Sexual Orientation. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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5  Reframing Dance Appreciation and Dance History to Teach Social Responsibility Haley Hoss Jameson

Today’s political and social climate in the United States shows that now, more than ever, personal responsibility and social responsibility are needed. In my experience, many college students come to dance with very narrow views of what dance is, how it should be expressed, who should be able to dance, and how to proceed with their own futures in this field. Students often do not recognize what roles dance plays in the world, other than a form of entertainment, and they struggle to make connections between history and social issues. According to Naomi Jackson and Toni Shapiro-​Phim (2008), “Dance has been a vehicle for commentary on systemic poverty and homelessness, as well as other types of manipulation and/​or discrimination based on age, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, disability, criminal record, and nationality” (xvi). I decided to address these connections with my students in dance theory classes. In teaching Dance Appreciation and Dance History, I use the framework of identity categories that are often included as protected classes in nondiscrimination statements to explore the role dance plays in personal responsibility, social responsibility, and artistic expression. We investigate how dance is used as a voice to combat oppression, and how dance can be a way of knowing and interacting with the world around us. Dance Appreciation at my institution is a part of the core curriculum and must adhere to developing the following competencies: critical thinking, communication skills, personal responsibility, social responsibility, and teamwork. The terms personal responsibility, social responsibility, social justice, and culture might be experienced differently elsewhere, so for the purpose of contextualization, I  am using definitions extrapolated from the American Association of Colleges and Universities’ rubrics that have been restructured for our campus core learning objectives. My institution uses the following definitions when evaluating the core knowledge a student should possess by graduation:

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• Social responsibility incorporates intercultural competence, know-

• •

•

ledge of civic responsibility, and the ability to engage effectively in regional, national, or global communities (Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board 2018, 4). Personal responsibility is “the ability to reason about and evaluate ethical conduct” (Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board 2018, 4). “Culture,” according to our rubric, refers to “any behavioral patterns cultivated from societal interaction rather than from biological inheritance” (Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board 2018, 4). Social justice, for this article, is defined as “justice in terms of the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society” (Oxford Living Dictionaries 2018).

Using the framework of protected class identity categories helps to structure the course to achieve those objectives. It also refines my pedagogical methods and encourages students to make connections with the material.

Previous Approaches I have taught Dance History and Dance Appreciation for many years, with the general purpose of teaching the salient moments in Western concert dance to dance majors as well as for general education credit. My pedagogical approach, as a new college educator, was that of “sage on the stage,” or lecturing, testing, and rote memorization. The textbook I used to teach Dance History was History of the Dance in Art and Education by Richard Kraus, Sarah Chapman Hilsendager, and Brenda Dixon (1991), as it was the same text I read in my undergraduate education. This linear approach to teaching was what had been modeled for me as an undergraduate student, and it felt familiar to me. Dance Appreciation was a broad survey course that began with the question, “What is dance?” We examined the highlights of ballet, modern, jazz, tap, musical theatre dance, contemporary, hip hop, and So You Think You Can Dance or “what’s happening now” in fifteen weeks, and ended with the original question, “What is dance?” to facilitate reflection at the end of the term. In both instances, I found that students’ reflections indicated a lack of connection and engagement with the material, the larger social issues, and the reasons choreographers and artists created their work. I  had hoped students would connect the artists’ work with the social issues of each time period and the politics involved in the evolution of

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Reframing Dance Appreciation and Dance History 73 dance in various genres. I wanted them to connect the past to the present and to the work they, themselves, might create. Thus began my journey of discovering that my students needed to engage in social awareness and social justice. I  searched and used various textbooks, articles, Internet sources, and looked at themes I could use that would facilitate “accountability, the ability to make choices that reflect personal values, the recognition of the larger community, and the skills to be a critical media consumer” in relation to dance and their lives (Schupp 2011, 23). I  realized that I  also needed to frame my courses in such a way that I could demonstrate the values of personal and social responsibility. If I wanted my students to dig deeper into these issues, then I needed to model that for them as well.

A New Framework One solution was to use group projects and research as a tool for students to more deeply engage with the material. I structured my classes in such a way that categorized the course by larger topics: religion, politics, race and ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation and marital status, body type, and ability. These frameworks were used to organize dance content into units of study. Each unit was approximately two to three weeks in duration, and I still tried to squeeze in traditional tests—​midterms and final exams—​for assessment as well. Depending on the number of students in each class section, the class was split into four to eight groups with four to six people in each group. Class size for these courses usually ranged from twenty-​five to forty students in each section. Another solution was to use a rotation of daily activities for my students. The rotation consisted of library research days, lectures on the larger topics and dance including film and discussion days, dance experience days that were related to each larger topic, and finally presentations of their group projects. Additional days were used for review of material and examinations. Each of these activities allowed students to engage with material in different learning modes: content investigation, reciprocal interaction, aural learning, visual discovery, and kinesthetic experience. I chose this rotation to model the process I wished for them to explore in each unit, and each rotation was repeated with every unit. Library research days started each unit as a means to foster a sense of inquiry in students. In my experience, many students who take Dance Appreciation are first-​ year undergraduate students and feel overwhelmed by library research. Even this generation of students who are adept at finding almost anything online are often overwhelmed by true research. Frequently, my students struggle with finding credible resources on a topic, making connections with the material, critically

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74  Haley Hoss Jameson analyzing and synthesizing that material, and then communicating their findings through a cohesive group presentation to the rest of the class. Each time I take a group to the library, I request a librarian to share the mechanics of searching, researching, and citing legitimate academic sources for their research projects. When we researched dance and religion, for instance, each group chose a religion to research. Once they selected a religion, students looked at how dance is viewed, utilized (or not and why), and expressed within that religion. Some of the religions previously studied were Greek polytheism; Hinduism; Judaism; Islam; Animism; Paganism; Native religions of the Americas; religions of the Polynesian islands, Australia, and New Zealand; various religions of Africa; and Vodun (Voodoo). I have taught primarily in institutions and in locations where the student population is predominantly Christian. For that reason, I  chose not to allow them to research Christianity because I  wanted students to investigate a religion that was likely unfamiliar to them. I created a set of guiding questions to assist the students in their research and to provide them an open structure for their presentation of the material. Examples of the guiding questions, along with directions for the first group project, follow. Guidelines/​Questions:  Your group will present for at least three minutes and no more than six minutes. Your presentation should answer at least five of these questions: How did dance affect the religion or tribe/​culture you are researching, or how did the religion affect dance? Was/​is dance significant? What social conditions surrounded the religion? What time period are you sharing? Was the subject (dance or religious/​ ceremonial dance) ordinary or controversial? How has the dance and/​or religion changed over time? When is/​was dance done in this religion? What is the role of the group or society in terms of religion? What biases do you have in relation to these topics? How does this relate to you, me, us? What is the most important subject/​issue to share about this topic? Format:  Each group may choose any presentation style you wish—​ speech, PowerPoint, dance demonstration/​ explanation, video, poster board, etc. Assign roles to each person in the group for the presentation of material. Sources:  Minimum of ten sources, including books/​ e-​ books, periodicals, encyclopedias, and journals (four of your ten must be offline/​paper/​non-​website sources). Be sure to triangulate your sources, meaning ensure at least three say the same thing about your topic to make sure what you are presenting is accurate.

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Reframing Dance Appreciation and Dance History 75 Each group will submit: A written/​file version of your presentation with each person’s role on a separate page. You will earn three grades for this project: individual, group, and peer evaluation. The next two class periods after our library experience set the expectations for the students’ projects and helped them to dig deeper into each unit topic. I  lectured with a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation to show how their work should be displayed in a visual and verbal format immediately following their library research day. Next, I assigned readings, shared videos in our course management system, and held discussions over the readings and my presentation. When we researched dance and politics, I lectured about King Louis XIV, his use of dance as a political tool, and the incorporation of dance into the political posturing in other courts of Europe. Another lecture consisted of the politics during the Harlem Renaissance and during the civil rights movement, and social dances of those time periods. Readings such as “Animation Politique:  The Embodiment of Nationalism in Zaire” by Joan Huckstep (2008), and “Practical Imperative:  German Dance, Dancers, and Nazi Politics” by Marion Kant (2008) were assigned for students to view and discuss for the next class period. These days were followed by a dance experience day involving the Charleston and swing dance. Possible research topics and time periods included in the politics unit were the U.S. during the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s; 1960s and 1970s; 1980s and 1990s; and current political happenings (both in the U.S. and worldwide). Capoeira, Gumboot, Ghost Dance, and Hula were also included as possible research topics due to the political nature of their creation or performance. Student responses to their fellow students’ presentations varied from surface-​ level observations like, “Gumboot dance affected politics and Africa by using this dance as a way to protest against mine employers,” to more applicable reflections on current politics, such as, “Today we continue to express ourselves through popular dance. We separate ourselves from stressful events like war, mass shootings, and police murders by dancing and having fun with dance on social media.”1 I believe it is important for people to have a physical experience of dance for them to fully appreciate its many forms and purposes. A visceral or kinesthetic experience of a dance done in a particular time period, for a specific religious purpose, or for a noteworthy protest gives the student a better understanding of what each group, culture, or community experienced in its creation or performance. The same can be said of dances performed with some perceived impediment or limitation. I chose to have a dance experience day for each unit so that students could have a better understanding of each unit’s concept.

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76  Haley Hoss Jameson For the overarching topic of body type and ability, I had students dance blindfolded, both with a partner and individually. Each person had a partner to keep him or her safe from objects and other people throughout the lesson. I categorized these two topics together to address some of the hidden issues dancers face such as eating disorders, cutting, and other anxiety disorders. We also studied groups such as Axis, Dancing Wheels, and other physically integrated dance companies. Articles such as “Balance and Freedom: Dancing in from the Margins of Disability” by Wyatt Bessing (2008), and “Dance and Disability” by Alito Alessi with Sara Zolbrod (2008) were assigned and discussed. After the blindfolded dance experience, students’ responses were varied. One group responded that they could “dance without another sense or without a limb, but that [they] would find it difficult to perform blind.” I believe the students’ awareness of other people’s challenges broadened through this kinesthetic experience. During the process of each group project, I noticed that many of my students preferred more structure than I  gave them, but many also enjoyed being able to choose formats, style, topics, and time periods. I  observed that group dynamics emerged with each class depending on the makeup of the class, particularly in terms of division of workload, leadership, and project completion. Occasionally, I  allowed for self-​selection in groups if the majority of the class knew each other or were familiar with various classmates and their work habits. However, I  played with group dynamics in terms of the overarching topics, specifically gender and race or ethnicity. I tried to make sure that the class was not segregated according to race or ethnicity, which tended to happen through self-​selection. If men were in my class, sometimes I  put all the men together, and deliberately segregated the class by gender, and other times I  tried to evenly distribute the number of men within each group. I  made this choice based on my first few semesters’ experiences. I  noticed that men in the groups, although almost always the minority in the class, tended to assume leadership roles when it came to assignment of duties, but not necessarily in terms of workload. To change that dynamic, sometimes the groups changed with each topic or presentation, and ­sometimes the class stayed with the same group the entire duration of the semester. I  changed this last variable to evaluate teamwork dynamics from semester to semester. I  wanted to see if the length of time spent with a group changed the group dynamic or increased students’ ability to work as a team. I tried to model a democratic process within the group structure, and I  believe that many of my students felt like they had a voice. One student commented at the end of the semester, “In my group, the work model dynamic was more of a political dynamic. Our group was like a democratic

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Reframing Dance Appreciation and Dance History 77 system. In a democratic system, the [significance] of people’s voices is important, and in my group, that was similar.”

Pedagogical Reflections The longer I teach in this format, the more I am convinced that dance is a tremendous vehicle for connection making and for modeling the issues of personal responsibility and social responsibility. I continue to reorganize and change the order in which I present each of the larger sections of material, as I have noticed a difference in the students’ willingness to make connections with the material, and with each other, as the order of introduction and presentation changes. Their recognition of the need for personal and social responsibility within each section and the overarching concept of the class also changes depending on the order in which topics are presented. When I initially used this framework, I approached the topics in the order I  found in many typical statements for protected class identity categories: race, color, religion (creed), gender, gender expression, age, national origin (ancestry), disability, marital status, sexual orientation, and military status. I found that this order did not promote connections between topics in ways I had hoped for my students to make. I looked at the order in which I presented material and discovered that grouping related protected categories together would assist students in their connection-​making processes. The latest iteration of order and topics is religion; politics; race, ethnicity, and culture; gender, marital status, and sexual orientation; body type; and ability. By grouping religion, politics, race, ethnicity, and culture together one right after the other, students make connections among those topics more easily and are better able to see how they affect one another. Most recently, I  began to integrate the framework of the “nondiscrimination statement” into my dance history classes. Many in college settings strive to make “postsecondary dance more multicultural [by] … exposing students to non-​western forms and cultivating an appreciation of someone else’s cultural dance form” (Risner and Stinson 2010, 5), which is an important first step. I  want to rethink assumptions about how we think of all dance beyond just valuing ballet and modern. The dance history class still tends toward a linear view of time and salient moments in dance through time. Recently, though, I have been focusing on a guiding set of questions as I lecture, assign readings, conduct discussions, and assign group research projects: How did dance affect the topic you are researching, or how did the topic affect dance? Was/​is dance significant? What social conditions surrounded the topic? What time period are you sharing? Was the

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78  Haley Hoss Jameson subject ordinary or controversial? How has the dance changed over time? What is the role of the group or society in terms of the topic? What biases do you have in relation to these topics? How does this relate to you, me, us? What is the most important subject/​issue to share about this topic? This way, we can begin to address issues of “access, representation, historical and cultural context, and the systemic biases that lie beneath continued social inequity and injustice” (Risner and Stinson 2010, 7). One thing is clear: These courses and assignments give students the opportunity to use their voices. Karen Schupp (2011) asserted that developing experiences that allow students to voice an opinion on relevant topics, consider this opinion in a larger context, and then act on it [by presenting it to the class] is one way to help students become civically involved and broaden their sociopolitical awareness. (23) Studying dance history in relation to broader social justice frameworks helps students to discover both personal responsibility and social responsibility. Students are beginning to make connections between their experiences and their worldview. They tend to start the semester with preconceived notions of what dance is; what part they play in policies, politics, and decision making; and how they can affect change in the world. By the end of the semester, those views tend to shift. Some students reflected that their eyes were opened to the impact that dance has had on the world, whereas others began to see the connections between religion and politics, and many begin to view social responsibility as a personal construct. One student shared with me, “When you relate politics to something that is important to me, like dance, it helps me to understand what is going on in the world.” Moving forward, I will continue to shape these courses by challenging students’ views and notions of what dance is. I  will continue to create projects that foster community, teamwork, and personal responsibility to enhance students’ awareness of their social responsibilities. I will continue to model the ethics and concepts of personal responsibility and social justice, because as an educator, the next generation is my responsibility.

Note 1 Student quotes are used with permission.

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References Alessi, Alito, with Sara Zolbrod. 2008. “Dance and Disability.” In Dance, Human Rights, and Social Justice: Dignity in Motion, edited by Naomi Jackson and Toni Shapiro-​Phim, 329–​323. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, Inc. Bessing, Wyatt. 2008. “Balance and Freedom: Dancing in from the Margins of Disability.” In Dance, Human Rights, And Social Justice: Dignity in Motion, edited by Naomi Jackson and Toni Shapiro-​ Phim, 285–​ 290. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, Inc. Huckstep, Joan. 2008. “Animation Politique: The Embodiment of Nationalism in Zaire.” In Dance, Human Rights, and Social Justice:  Dignity in Motion, edited by Naomi Jackson and Toni Shapiro-​ Phim, 51–​ 66. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, Inc. Jackson, Naomi, and Toni Shapiro-​Phim, eds. 2008. Dance, Human Rights, and Social Justice: Dignity in Motion. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, Inc. Kant, Marion. 2008. “Practical Imperative:  German Dance, Dancers, and Nazi Politics.” In Dance, Human Rights, and Social Justice:  Dignity in Motion, edited by Naomi Jackson and Toni Shapiro-​Phim, 5–​19. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, Inc. Kraus, Richard, Sarah Chapman Hilsendager, and Brenda Dixon. 1991. History of the Dance in Art and Education. 3rd ed. Endlewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, Inc. Oxford Living Dictionaries. 2018. “Social Justice.” Accessed March 20, 2017. https://​en.oxforddictionaries.com/​definition/​us/​social_​ justice. Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. 2018. “Texas Core Curriculum.” Accessed July 26, 2018. www.thecb.state.tx.us/​ index. cfm?objectid=A0A1D690-​18B8-​11E8-​A6640050560100A9. Risner, Doug, and Susan W. Stinson. 2010. “Moving Social Justice: Challenges, Fears and Possibilities in Dance Education.” International Journal of Education & the Arts 11 (6):1–​26. Schupp, Karen. 2011. “Informed Decisions:  Dance Improvisation and Responsible Citizenship.” Journal of Dance Education 11 (1):22–​ 29. doi:10.1080/​15290824.2011.540511.

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6  Comm(unity) Promoting Civic Engagement in a Modern Dance Performance Course Traci Klein

Instructors in higher education arts programs have a responsibility to promote active citizenship and to encourage their students to use the creative arts as a vehicle for positive social change. However, in dance curricula, incorporating these concepts can be challenging, given the long history of structured technique pedagogy and the specific learning objectives and outcomes students typically expect. Within the dance minor curriculum design at Texas A&M International University, modern dance performance courses allow the faculty the space, opportunity, and freedom to implement unique experiences in the classroom. In my Fall 2017 modern dance performance course, I was interested in encouraging students to become socially responsible and to engage with their community. I set a pedagogical goal to build connections among the students to create a cohesive, more meaningful performance and to bridge the gap between the performers and the greater community, both on campus and off. To achieve this, the course was structured around two key events:  choreographing and performing an ensemble piece designed to foster an awareness of community and devising creative projects that would benefit a community of any size or nature through a dance-​related event. Incorporating responsible citizenship into a modern dance performance course in higher education is not without its challenges. Dance instruction’s long history encourages students to expect a certain structure when they enroll in these courses. The age-​old approach of replicating movement still holds tremendous value to dancers, but students can also benefit from various pedagogical methodologies. In an academic environment, dance faculty are responsible for mentoring students to become role model citizens. Karen Schupp (2011) explained that when beginning an undergraduate dance program “many students are civically inactive or just starting to develop a sociopolitical conscience” (23). In my modern dance performance course, assignments involving community engagement were incorporated to enhance learning of technical

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Comm(unity) 81 and artistic skills while encouraging students to become active citizens. Bringing elements central to community engagement into modern dance courses positions dance educators as leaders who can “contribute—​in big and small ways—​to the transformation of U.S. society as a whole” (Fitzgerald 2017, 8).

A Look into the Curriculum Established in 2000, the dance minor program at Texas A&M International University culminates each semester in an end-​of-​semester concert featuring all of the dance disciplines offered in current courses. Each professor has the freedom to design his or her own course work. My usual approach to the course focuses the first half of the semester on advancing the students’ technical skills and the latter half on creating choreography and enhancing their artistry in performance. However, in response to recent events, I redesigned the course for this particular semester to encourage the students to think about responsible citizenship while still presenting them with challenging movement concepts. The goals for this course were to:

• Challenge the students physically with an advanced movement vocabulary that emphasized their individual artistry;

• Build a stronger bond among the performers; • Challenge the students creatively and empower them to choreograph their own movement phrases;

• Challenge students to consider their individual role within the classroom and in the greater community;

• Establish a connection with the community beyond the classroom; • Challenge students to think critically about the role of dance in a global context.

When considering how to achieve these goals, it was important to recognize the uniqueness of the established curriculum and how it allows for the freedom to think outside the typical parameters of a structured dance class, to break from what some students would perceive as a “normal” class in the dance program. As mentioned earlier, the main component of this course is to create an ensemble piece for the dance concert. Although there is some room in the beginning of the semester to emphasize technique and skill advancement, a decision was made to depart from the typical approach by focusing more energy on the creative process and community building. Dance Exchange, a nonprofit arts organization founded in 1976 by Liz Lerman, is one of the groundbreaking dance organizations working with this methodology.

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82  Traci Klein According to Dance Exchange’s website, the interest of the company is to advance the field by encouraging artists and audiences to “think beyond the stage and towards the many ways that dancemaking can have an impact on our world” (Dance Exchange n.d.). Although most of the classes in this course were devoted to creating choreography, others had various goals such as team building and trust development. Exercises and phrases were designed to explore weight sharing, specifically how to build a strong base with the body to support another person:  a standard task involving partners, but the purpose of which transcended mere physics. As Mary Fitzgerald (2017) noted, “even small changes in our conventional approaches to teaching technique can make an enormous difference in how students engage with each other on a humanistic level” (6). This break in the pace of my usual dance class afforded the students space to solve problems together, building a stronger group dynamic based on supporting one another in various situations.

Exploration and Empowerment One of the goals for this semester was to choreograph and perform a piece centered on the concept of community. My interest in creating a work that would express the individual voices of my students while building a strong, inclusive, noncompetitive environment for them to freely express themselves was a challenge for me choreographically. In this work, we explored the idea of “self and community” and how to connect the performers with the audience rather than simply have the former “perform” for the latter. As a white woman in a predominantly Hispanic community that steadfastly embraces its cultural traditions, I asked myself, “What unites us as people?” and “How can our community inspire us as artists and, in turn, be inspired by us?” I was simply interested in seeing how dance could bring people together. To get the students acquainted with the concept for our piece, I asked them first to write a paper defining what community means to them. In this context, the term community was interpreted broadly; the students were asked to first consider how many different types of “communities” they belong to. Among the other questions to consider were the following:  Are you a role model in your community? Have you ever had a negative experience in a community? If so, how did this affect you emotionally and physically? Among the most interesting results of this assignment were the students’ candid descriptions of feeling like outsiders in their hometowns. One student explained how family members had disowned her for not embracing her Hispanic culture or learning fluent Spanish. Other students felt a strong bond with their

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Comm(unity) 83 families and friends, characterizing this network as their safe zone. “Community is unity,” wrote a student. Many of the students wrote about uniting with their communities, from which came the title for the piece, Comm(unity). From the outset of the process, the choreography was either inspired by or generated by the students. It was important to me that the process as well as the content of the work related to ideas of community. Inspired by the writing of the students, I used their words to fuel my movement explorations, developing several images within the piece from phrases that sprang from the page. For example, early in the work, the dancers are “introduced” by walking a pathway in pairs from the wings to center stage, then straight downstage, splitting stage right and left to form two circles on either side of the stage. The students then took turns spelling out their names in the center of the circle. With some minimal coaching from me, the dancers created their “name” phrase, based on a methodology I learned while working with Jill Johnson of the Forsythe Company. This process involves using various body parts to mimic or “draw” letters in space. For example, to spell the letter C a dancer could drop down to one knee and trace an arc on the floor with an elbow. By initiating the choreographic process in this manner, ownership of the piece was shared with the students. As Schupp (2011) explained, the exploratory process of dance allows students to “take ownership of their own dancing” and to “relate to their larger community of classroom peers” (23). Through this investigation, we created a dialogue, problem-​solving together with the students freely engaging in the creative process. According to Fitzgerald (2017), collaboration is a “process of learning and creating in which the voices of all participants are present and valued” (2). Similarly, author Kerry Chappell (2011) explained how movement phrases generated from task-​based prompts “communicate more powerfully” because they arise from an image and “say more about the individual” (50). Among the benefits of this methodology, Chappell (2011) noted “an improved approach to teamwork, the ability to make independent decisions, confidence to work alone and in groups in a focused way” (53). Through exploration and movement development, an atmosphere of empowerment in which the students could feel comfortable offering movement ideas was created and embraced. In the classroom, empowerment is an outgrowth of feminist pedagogy, acting as a force that holds a community together, giving students the energy and potential to act for the betterment of the population (Shrewsbury 1987). Dance class can be a very individual, even selfish experience for students if instructors allow a certain atmosphere to take shape in the classroom. Dancers are not only critical of their bodies’ abilities and weaknesses, but also concerned with how they compare

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84  Traci Klein to their peers. Informed by feminist pedagogy and community-​based pedagogical approaches, dance educators can consider both the individual needs of the students and ways they can relate to or become part of something larger than themselves, whether by performing harmoniously as an ensemble or through community-​focused projects. In cooperative learning methodology, one of the four basic teaching structures outlined is termed positive interdependence (Rollheiser and Stevahn 1998). In one of our classroom sessions, students engaged in trust exercises and partner work that emphasized sharing body weight through pushing and pulling, counterbalance, and various improvisation techniques that trained them to sense their partners’ center of weight. The organic nature of the movement was emphasized and challenged the dancers to become “one” person moving in space together. One important aspect of this work is that dancers must have a sense of their own center of weight before they can take on the weight of another person. Partner work of this nature taught the students how to relate to each other haptically and stressed the importance of accountability (e.g., “I will catch you if you catch me”), which, taken together, symbolized their role as responsible citizens within the larger community. In positive interdependence, students are more inclined to encourage and assist one another if a gain for one results in a gain for the other (Rollheiser and Stevahn 1998). Working together, the dancers needed to figure out how to keep each other “centered,” which involved spoken and unspoken dialogue between them. Another addition to the piece involved the use of a prop, a long white rope that stretched as long as the stage. Choreographically, the rope symbolized a connection among the performers, one used in various forms: from depicting a “struggle” between the members of the community through a playful game of tug of war, to signifying the power of a group dynamic in a section in which the rope was shaped into a circle. The students improvised while holding the rope in the circular shape, using various levels and tempo changes to denote the differences we see among the members of our community.

Creative Community Projects For the final exam for this course, the concept of community was incorporated by assigning the students to develop a creative project that would connect them to one of their communities beyond the classroom. Their projects were required to include a dance-​related activity as a way to contribute to the betterment of a community, either for their on-​ campus peers, the surrounding community, or through an international project. To inspire them, I shared three examples:

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Comm(unity) 85 1. Gibney’s Community Action, a program that unites dancers with survivors of domestic violence (Gibney n.d.); 2. Movement Exchange, an international dance exchange that unites dance and service (Movement Exchange 2018); 3. Young Dancemakers Company, a free summer training program for New York City high school students, founded by Alice Teirstein (Young Dancemakers 2013). At Texas A&M International University, the College of Arts and Sciences has published guidelines for undergraduate research from which I  borrowed for the basis of the exam. The students each submitted a digital copy of their proposal that included a project summary, plans for implementation, and expected outcomes. While reviewing the guidelines for the assignment, they were encouraged to choose a topic that was personally significant to them to create meaningful projects. The results of this assignment were beyond my expectations. On the day of the exam, students were asked to present their projects to the class in an informal setting. Feeling inspired after each presentation, I  asked each student what was stopping him or her from putting the project into motion, to which the response was invariably, “Nothing.” All students very thoughtfully detailed their projects so that the community would benefit both physically and mentally. Proposals ranged from weekly dance classes for autistic children and children at a local orphanage, to workshops promoting the vitality and courage of breast cancer survivors. Although the range of topics was vast, all of the proposals focused on the betterment of the community members and promoted engagement through creative arts activities. It is important to note that at this particular university the majority of students either originate or commute from the surrounding city or closely neighboring towns. Therefore, these students were more familiar with the current arts programming of the place they considered “home” than would be anyone with an outsider’s point of view. Additionally, they were encouraged to consider projects of a global nature and not just for their immediate communities. Although the focus of the course was on performance, my hope was that students would treat the community engagement assignment not as just another performance opportunity but as a way to connect with the community members through shared dance experiences. Just as Sherrie Barr (2013) discovered, “When a performance option is within the scope of a project, students want to participate” (116). Although there is intrinsic value in performance, there is little room to actually interact with the audience and leave a lasting impression. Thankfully, the majority of the projects that my students envisioned involved workshops or a series

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86  Traci Klein of classes designed for a specific group of people or the general public. Although there are no plans to develop the projects at this time, I do foresee the opportunity to develop a service-​learning course from this assignment. Perhaps in the future, the course could involve a semester of embodied learning with community-​oriented dance activities, with the latter half devoted to the development and implementation of the students’ specific projects. As Schupp (2011) explained, broadening students’ experiences in dance by developing activities that give them a voice and encourage ownership of and accountability for their actions is “one way to help students become civically involved” (23). Barr (2013) noted that in socially engaged dance practices, “participants find a sense of self while taking ownership of their dancing” (116).

Encouraging Civic Engagement Thomas Ehrlich’s (2000) research shows that students who attend college increase their civic engagement. His study also indicates that college students’ involvement might be temporary, as the gains actually decrease in the years following graduation (Ehrlich 2000). However, no research was found suggesting the same decline in engagement for students who develop their own community-​based volunteer activities. As noted in “Service-​learning Instructional Design Considerations,” added importance inheres in designing a project that aligns with the goals of all of the participants (Maddrell 2014). Thus, if the students follow through with implementing their projects, I propose that because these students are the creators of such projects, the service involvement in their community might continue and perhaps even increase after graduation. Empowering students with the belief that they can make a difference in their community through dance is also a reminder that, as citizens, they have a civic duty to effect positive change in their environment. As a result of exploring community through choreography and performance, plans to permanently implement a service-​learning aspect into the dance minor curriculum are in the foreseeable future. Savannah Lane (2007) suggested that through service learning, students acquire new and lasting friendships with others who participate in the acts with them. Because dance performances thrive on strong connections among the ensemble members, adding a service-​learning component to the course work could further develop bonds among the members of the class. As Barr (2014) explained, “When professors design assignments in response to the concerns of a given community, students are invited to transform classroom theory into real life experiences that provide opportunities for constructing knowledge through collaborative and diverse inquiries” (109). Active learning outside of the classroom could

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Comm(unity) 87 contribute to building a harmonious ensemble, paving the way for a seamless creative work on the stage, one in which all members have a voice and feel empowered to share with others. Robert G.  Bringle and Julie A.  Hatcher (1996) suggested that participating in service activities is a way to “gain further understanding of course content, a broader appreciation of the discipline, and an enhanced sense of civic responsibility” (222). Although the current structure of the course did not permit the implementation of the community engagement element until the end of the course, time allowed for incorporating the beginnings of a service-​based learning component by establishing the guidelines for community project design, implementation, and outcome predictions. It is proposed that with more time and further development of the program’s curriculum, a service-​based learning course could be included in the course offerings. Research posits that faculty who use service learning discover that it refreshes the traditional classroom environment and advances the students’ level of interest in the subject, thus making teaching a more pleasant experience (Bringle and Hatcher 1996). During the final exam presentations, it was observed that many of the students had become emotionally attached to their project proposals and were excited about their work. Even though the projects will not be completed during the semester, the benefits of the community-​themed creative process combined with the written projects were sufficient validation to proceed with similar work in the future. Partner work and trust-​building movement explorations created stronger bonds among the classmates, resulting in a more seamless performance. Additionally, the students now have an understanding of the lasting impact they can have on their community, thus promoting responsible citizenship in the classroom and civic engagement through the arts.

ORCID Traci Klein http://​orcid.org/​0000-​0002-​1518-​3570.

References Barr, Sherrie. 2013. “Learning to Learn:  A Hidden Dimension within Community Dance Practice.” Journal of Dance Education 13 (4):115–​121. doi:10.1080/​15290824.2012.754546. Barr, Sherrie. 2014. “Are We Following or Leading?: A Community Responds.” Journal of Dance Education 14 (3):109–​112. doi:10.1080/​15290824.2014.895006. Bringle, Robert, and Julie Hatcher. 1996. “Implementing Service Learning in Higher Education.” Journal of Higher Education 67 (2):220–​239. doi:10.2307/​ 2943981.

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88  Traci Klein Chappell, Kerry. 2011. Close Encounters: Dance Partners for Creativity. Stoke-​ on-​Trent, UK: Institute of Education Press. Dance Exchange. n.d. “Dance Exchange Mission & Vision.” Accessed May 23, 2018. http://​danceexchange.org/​about/​mission-​vision/​. Ehrlich, Thomas. 2000. Civic Responsibility and Higher Education. Westport, CT: The American Council on Education and The Oryx Press. Fitzgerald, Mary. 2017. “Community to Classroom: Reflections on Community-​ Centered Pedagogy in Contemporary Modern Dance Technique.” Journal of Dance Education 17 (1):1–​7. doi:10.1080/​15290824.2015.1115866. Gibney. n.d. “Community Action.” Accessed May 23, 2018. https://​ gibneydance. org/​community-​action/​. Lane, Savannah. 2007. “Benefits of Service Learning.” Reason and Respect 3 (2):6–​7. Accessed May 23, 2018. http://​docs.rwu.edu/​rr/​vol3/​iss2/​3. Maddrell, Jennifer. 2014. “Service-​Learning Instructional Design Consider­ ations.” Journal of Computing in Higher Education 26 (3):213–​ 226. doi: 10.1007/​s12528-​014-​9085-​y. Movement Exchange. 2018. “Home.” Accessed May 23, 2018. http://​ movement​ exchanges.org/​. Rollheiser, Carol, and Laurie Stevahn. 1998. “The Role of Staff Developers in Promoting Effective Teacher Decision-​Making.” In Professional Development for Cooperative Learning Issues and Approaches, edited by Celeste M. Brody and Neil Davidson, 31–​37. Albany, NY: State University of New York. Schupp, Karen. 2011. “Informed Decisions:  Dance Improvisation and Respon­ sible Citizenship.” Journal of Dance Education 11 (1):22–​29. doi:10.1080/​ 15290824.2011.540511. Shrewsbury, Carolyn, M. 1987. “What is Feminist Pedagogy?” Women’s Studies Quarterly 15 (3–​4):6–​14. Young Dancemakers Company. 2013. “Training and performance.” Accessed May 23, 2018. http://​community.ecfs.org/​youngdance makers/​about/​training​and-​rehearsal.

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7  Circle of Love A Message from Hip Hop Tehmekah MacPherson

Peace, love, unity, and having fun1 are original intentions of Hip Hop according to Afrika Bambaataa,2 among other central Hip Hop figures in the 1970s and 80s. As someone born and raised in the Bronx—​a recognized birthplace of Hip Hop—​I was in sync with these original intentions as they appeared in the everyday Hip Hop energy and culture that I experienced in the late 1980s and early 90s. My favorite Hip Hop element was dance, and although I  specialize in breaking and house, I always maintained an equal love and respect for other Hip Hop dance techniques like locking and popping, along with other artistic Hip Hop elements like writing or aerosol and graffiti art, DJing, lyricism, and knowledge. My holistic respect is fueled by the original vibrations of love, peace, unity, and joy that I  felt when connected with the people around me who identified with and embraced the synergy of Hip Hop culture. As time progressed, mainstream Hip Hop went through some considerable alterations from the 1970s to 2011 (Rose 2008). When invited to teach Hip Hop dance for a newly revived dance minor in 2011, I had my concerns because my Hip Hop instruction in various settings previous to this invitation left me a bit disheartened. There seemed to be such a demand for the “wow” or the movement product, instead of the context, energy, and process that imbued the movement. These participants I encountered during Hip Hop dance classes, workshops, and programs were not immune to mainstream Hip Hop dance conditioning. Although this was understandable, I still wondered how I could share the Hip Hop I knew as a cultural history and expressive energy containing helpful life lessons. I began to see my invitation to instruct Hip Hop dance as an opportunity to at least experiment with this inquiry. I developed a pedagogy that encouraged a deeper look at Hip Hop called the circle pedagogy or circular approach for Hip Hop dance classes, workshops, and lecture presentations in academic and community spaces. The circular approach allows us to recognize and kinetically

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90  Tehmekah MacPherson imagine the cultural history, energy, and wisdom in Hip Hop dance culture. It also helps recognize the messages and lessons contained in Hip Hop wisdom that invite us to better connect and support each other as a community in the quest to improve human relations. This chapter shares some ways that the circle pedagogy has been applied to my teaching experiences to help students expand their sense of community.

The Circle Pedagogy There are four major principles based on Hip Hop wisdom that define the circle pedagogy. The first principle is love energy. Although the energy of love is emphasized in this chapter, it harmonizes with peace, unity, and joy as underlying energy vibrations in Hip Hop. This energy is transferred, digested, and delivered through Hip Hop movement and others forms of expression. The next circular principle is elemental synergy. There are four major aesthetic elements of Hip Hop expression that operate alongside dance in interconnected ways: emceeing, DJing, aerosol art,3 and knowledge. Historic and cultural context constitute the third principle. Like the path of a circle, we make past-​to-​present connections. Although the official name for the circle formation in Hip Hop is the cypher, I use the word circle as an umbrella term that affirms the integral role of the circular formation throughout the dance legacy of the African Diaspora, from the ring shout, to improvisational jazz circles, to the cypher specific to Hip Hop. The fourth and final principle: no “me” without “we” and vice versa means that the individual is always connected to the community. For wellness to occur, individual and collective levels of care must be equally honored. The four circular principles transpire through a continual process of the acronym RED: reflection, expression, and detection, although not necessarily in this order.

Expression: Opening Circle Activity I capitalize the word Hip Hop when referring to Hip Hop dance as recognition that the art form and dance element are part of a larger history and culture. As such, each dance step can reveal something about the Hip Hop culture from which it is born. Although the class skill level often dictates the type of Hip Hop vocabulary moves I share, the bounce serves as a technical precursor for all breaking and house levels that I teach. As Moncell Durden (2009) captured in his documentary Hip Hop Dance History and Concept, the “bounce” is technically foundational to Hip Hop movement. On a technical level, I would describe the bounce as a rebound action in which the body or body parts move like a spring to recover. It involves the full body, level changes, and can

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Circle of Love 91 be applied to different steps. There is a grounded yet flexible alertness that the bounce can offer as the body opens to it. When bodies become receptive enough to the bounce, we begin an activity designed to help acquaint us with the circle formation and the frequency of love it emits. Everyone in the circle goes around and states their name along with a move to match each syllable in their formal name or nickname (tag). Three syllables or less work best for the rhythmic call-​and-​response framework of this activity. I might, for example, introduce myself with three syllables:  Doc-​tor-​T clap, clap. After I say my name and clap twice—​“Doc-​tor-​T” clap, clap—​the circle responds by repeating “Doc-​tor-​T” clap, clap. We send each other love in the form of rhythmic support for each member of the circle to physically claim his or her space by voicing his or her name in a personally unique way. Once we finish this round, we add more lyrics for the second stage, which involves moving into what you love to do. If you love to read you could freeze a book gesture with your hands or a cooking gesture if you love to cook. The lyrics for stages one and two together are as follows: CALL:  Dr. T [clap, clap] CIRCLE RESPONDS:  Dr. T [clap, clap] CALL:  I love to _​_​_​_​_​_​_​[clap, clap] (say the word and move the gesture) CIRCLE RESPONDS:  You love to_​_​_​_​[clap, clap] (circle echoes)

The next person then follows the same format. Once we go around the circle with the rhythm and lyrics, we return to the basic rhythm of the pause, clap, clap. Half the circle maintains the basic clap rhythm while the other half of the circle moves to the claps with the bounce. This demonstrates the consistently interactive relationship between Hip Hop elements of dance and DJing. The graphic element is embodied in the freezes that we take in the circle focusing on different high-​to low-​level freezes. Finally, we move a Hip Hop message with the bounce as they repeat my lyric:  Hip Hop is about community, joy, peace, love, respect, and unity.

Reflection This opening activity helps students get a glimpse into the synergy among the five primary elements of Hip Hop culture. We reflect on our opening circle by asking about the qualities necessary to establish and sustain the circle. In alignment with the fourth circular principle, we also discuss when moments of “me and we” transpired in our activity. We agree that although we celebrate our individuality and uniqueness by stating our names and enjoyments, it is never isolated from but

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92  Tehmekah MacPherson reinforced by our surrounding circle. Love in the form of respect, trust, patience, and support are factored as “gluing qualities” that help hold our circle together. This prompts us to interrogate the meaning of circles in our everyday lives and think about the process of circle building as linked to the process of community building. Next, we discuss love and the presence of love in our lives. When looking for words to answer what love does, we often come up with “Love includes, fuels, supports, cares, listens, heals, shares.” We move these words into our daily lives by discussing love manifestations like support, caring, giving, sharing, and healing in networks that include family, campus, school, and other institutional and neighborhood communities. Our discussion reminds us that when we love something, we do not try to rush through it to get to an end product, but we relax into the process of it. This point serves as an invitation for students to open their hearts to the process of Hip Hop, and this openness allows the process of what we create together to take shape and evolve.

Expression: Breaking Dance Technique and History The chart in Table 7.1 helps students initiate breaking movement technique and vocabulary. Coined by DJ Kool Herc (Clive Campbell), breaking or breakin’ is the Hip Hop dance style that emerged in the 1970s as a dance response to the break beats that DJ Herc played in his music. Breaking dance technique and rhythms are shaped by a lineage of Afro-​derived dance forms, sounds, and values more specifically rooted in tap dance, the Lindy Hop, James Brown’s slides and good-​footin’, Brooklyn uprocking, and West Coast funk moves (Orejuela 2015). Afro-​Caribbean, African, Native, and Latin American communities harmonize to orchestrate a breaking dance technique that kinetically and sonically celebrates and preserves a record of creative multicultural history and contributions. After we learn a sufficient amount of foundational breaking dance technique and cultural history, we are ready for some application and detection.

Detection: What Can We Do with Hip Hop Lessons? The four principles that make up the circle pedagogy—​love energy, elemental synergy, past-​to-​present connection, and the individual as part of the whole—​are principles that help highlight and celebrate the socially responsible features of Hip Hop. Social justice and community building have always been a priority for classical Hip Hop. This priority manifests as Hip Hop’s knowledge element and, according to Afrika Bambaataa, involves reaching toward a progressively better understanding of oneself

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Circle of Love 93 Table 7.1 Hip Hop dance style:  Breaking participants—​B-​boys/​B-​girls (East Coast dance style) Breaking Terms and Positions*

Technical Description

Uprock/​Brooklyn Uprock

Shuffles, turns, and Performed to soul, rock, free styles. Upright and funk music, in sync movements: most with the entire song dominant throughout a including lyrics. routine. Introductory moves for Breakers often warm a breaker. Body is up with this before upright while legs and transitioning into down arms sway to the music. rock. Influenced by Uprock, African, and Native dance styles. Carefully practiced Usually follows a Top footwork performed Rock. with both hands and feet on the floor. Skillfully established, Includes ‘baby’ freezes and stylish poses. Done on other high to low level hands and forearms. pauses that were done in Requires upper body sync with the music. strength and practice. Includes complex and Further developed in the acrobatic moves done 1980s among youth who to the rhythm and grew more interested in accents in songs. acrobatics.

Top Rock

Down Rock

Freezes

Power Moves

Characteristics/​Notes

*For further details see Jorge “Popmaster Fabel” Pabon (2006).

and society. The knowledge element is contained in the name Hip Hop as KRS-​One (2006–​2007) affirms in the lyrics of his song, Hip Hop Lives (I come back). In the verse after the first chorus of his song, KRS-​One explains the words Hip and Hop. Based on his explanation, Hip means to be knowledgeable or to have a timely understanding and Hop refers to movement or actions that propel knowledge forward. The explanation implies that a timely and well-​informed understanding cannot become stagnant; it must walk with and move through you. (KRS-​One 2006–​2007). When the words Hip and Hop come together they trigger a message in motion. To collect information that will galvanize our message in motion, the students employ detective work by investigating the manner in which underground and mainstream emcees, past and present, engage socially responsible messages in their lyrics. By selecting and quoting songs as reference points in the same way we treat formally

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94  Tehmekah MacPherson written texts, we are able to cultivate our detection abilities and recognize song lyrics that capture circle building and social justice work. The Black-​Eyed Peas (Will.i.am. 2003) address the importance of human values and equality, and Common (Legend, Fiona, and Common 2010) suggests that only love can help and uplift us.4 Pinpointing the ways that Hip Hop artists address the holes or the areas of separation, inequality, and isolation in our shared societal circle motivates students to do the same. These detection skills fuel justice work, as justice is about fairness or a sense of balance, and our Hip Hop detective work is ultimately about identifying imbalance to restore points of balance on individual, communal, and societal levels. Artists from marginalized Hip Hop communities asserted themselves as a way to express themselves and let the people behind excluding policies know, “I am here. I have a voice. I will be heard.” These assertions remind us that we, too, have a voice, so what will we do with it?

Reflection and Expression We often use and quote lyrics as stimuli for reflective questioning. For example, some general questions stimulated from a remix of the song Wake Up Everybody (Legend, Fiona, and Common 2010) are how can love reboot, revive, and uplift us? Also, what are some ways that we can wake up? Lyrical reflection questions have prompted specific student lines that involve socialized gender beauty ideals and racial profiling. Examples of student created lines include “plastic bodies stand against the wall/​each one looking like a doll. They just want to look good/​cause society says they should” (Student response 20125), and “Where is the peace? Why is there so much hate on the streets? All Zimmerman did was discriminate/​now one young brother is dead and we can’t resuscitate. Can we educate to end the hate?” (Student response 2012). Once the students write to create their lines, they deliver them in rhythmic or spoken word fashion. Next, they select specific action words from their lines or an emcee’s lines to move with. With regard for the process of circle building, one word is designated as part of the block category and the other for the bridge category. A  block word might be discriminate and a bridge word could be educate. We work in groups or pairs to embody one block and one bridge word, ending up with a four-​count translation for each word, totaling eight counts. We mix our eight counts with lyrics, images, freezes, breaking, and initial movements and words from our opening circle to synthesize an embodied track or human rights message in motion. After we deliver our message, we discuss ways that we can apply information from our message to our everyday circles.

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Reflection: Agency Circular awareness is like a boomerang that moves from the individual level out to the community and then back to you again; it requires agency. This means that no matter how disempowered you might feel about personal or societal conditions, there is a spark of empowerment that awaits to be reclaimed by self-​expression and reflection. This also means that you own the part that you play in your personal and social challenges so that you do not allow hopelessness or complacency to win. It is important to maintain a sense of loving justice and balance within as we search for it on the outside. Hip Hop pioneer and inventor of the break beat, DJ Kool Herc (Chang 2005), reminded us of the role of balance, unity consciousness, and equal individual and social responsibility when he declared: Hip hop has always been about having fun, but it’s also about taking responsibility. Let’s hear something powerful. Tell people what you need to hear. How will we help the community? What do we stand for? … Hip hop is a family, so everybody has got to pitch in … It ain’t about keeping it real, it’s about keeping it right. (xi) We are most likely to “keep it right” for or do right by those we love. This recognition manifests in the classroom as circular questions to contemplate: What would it take for you to see the people on your right and left as loved ones? Furthermore, what would it take for you to begin to see someone on the street as a beloved cousin, sister, brother, aunt, or uncle? Where can you start?

Classroom Reflection During the conversations that follow our final presentations, students share that their other classes rarely promote unity. In contrast to our community-​ focused classroom climate, which strengthens student bonds, students often share how they very seldom connect, bond, or even speak to their peers in their other classes. In these moments, they are able to reflect back on the ways that they have been conditioned to emphasize individuality at the expense of collective connection. The ability to reflect, express, and detect the holes or the areas of communal isolation in their own experiences is due to the attainment of a more circular and uniting framework offered by the information that the circle pedagogy distills from the wisdom of Hip Hop. As students recognize the rewards of community building, they begin to lean into a posture from which to generate further community involvement.

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Conclusion Something invaluable happens when our bodies work and move together. Through rhythm we transmit an energy of love and oneness. Not a oneness that homogenizes or requires self-​negation, but one that liberates by completely accepting each point of the circle of oneness as a vital part of the greater whole. Through the dance circle pedagogy, I have gratefully experienced ways that students are granted permission by our Hip Hop adventures to open their hearts and move unifying dance messages that arise from a place of love. Our Hip Hop dance circle pedagogy sparks heartfelt connections that create common ground; helping us to “think higher and feel deeper” (Elie Wiesel, quoted in Fox 2009, n.p.)6 for ourselves, our communities, and our world.

Notes 1 Listen to and read lyrics to the song “Unity” by James Brown and Afrika Bambaataa (1984). 2 See “The Foundation” at www.thafoundation.com/​zulunews.htm. 3 Also referred to as tagging. 4 Listen to the songs Where is the Love by The Black-​Eyed Peas and Wake Up Everybody by John Legend & The Roots, featuring Common and Melanie Fiona. 5 Students have granted consent to use their responses. 6 Quoted by Ellie Wiesel in 2009 at the Chautauqua Institute in Upstate New York.

References Brown, James, and Baambaataa Afrika. 1984. Unity part II. Tommy Boy/​ Warner Bros. Musical Album. Chang, Jeff. 2005. Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-​Hop Generation. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press. Fox, Martin. 2009. “Center for Global Leadership.” Accessed April 2, 2018. https://​centerforgloballeadership.wordpress.com/​2009/​07/​27/​ elie-​wiesels-​ message-​to-​young-​people-​whatever-​you-​do-​in-​life-​thinkhigher-​and-​feel-​ deeper/​. History and Concept of Hip-​Hop Dance:  The Street Culture that Became a Global Expression. 2009. Produced by dancetime publications and directed by Moncell Durden. New York, NY: Dlex: productions. DVD. KRS-​One. 2006–​2007. Hip Hop Lives. Koch Records. Musical Album. Legend, John, with Melanie Fiona and Common. 2010. Wake Up! Sony Music Entertainment. Musical Album. Orejuela, Fernando. 2015. Rap and Hip Hop Culture. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

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Circle of Love 97 Pabon, Jorge [Fabel]. 2006. “Physical Graffiti: The History of Hip Hop Dance.” In Total Chaos: The Art and Aesthetics of Hip-​Hop, edited by Jeff Chang, 18–​26. Cambridge, MA: BasicCivitas. Rose, Tricia. 2008. The Hip Hop Wars:  What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop-​and Why it Matters. New York, NY: BasicCivitas. The Foundation. “Zulu Anniversary.” Accessed April 2, 2018. www. thafoundation.com/​zulunews.htm. Will.I.am. The Black Eyed Peas. 2003. Elephunk. Interscope. Musical Album.

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Index

accessibility 51–2 acculturation 26–7 administration 63 aesthetic education 12–13; citizenship 17–19; as cognition 14–15; and empathy 15–17 affect theory 14 African dances 22–3, 37, 68; challenges 35–7; diversity 24–6; embodied knowledge 32–3; Eurocentrism 23; learners’ questions 34–5; methodology and data analysis 27–8; needs for teaching 28–9; negative stereotypes 23, 28–9, 31; positive teaching outcomes 29–31; research question 24; stories 33–4; theoretical paradigms 26–7 agency see empowerment appreciation see dance appreciation and dance history arts education framework 7, 19–20; aesthetic education and social justice 12–19; citizenship 17–19; classroom practice 9–11; cognition 14–15; empathy 15–17; goals 9; methodology 11–12 arts funding 5–6 ballet 60–1, 63–4, 67 Bambaataa, A. 89 banking model 60 Barr, S. 85–6 Batson, G. 60 Being Present see Listening and Being Present black bodies 23–4, 31, 58–60 Black-Eyed Peas 94

body 32–3; Voice and Bodying 42, 49–51, 53; see also black bodies body type and ability 76 bounce 90–1 bounded being 45 Bradford, J. 49 breaking 92–3 Bringle, R.G. 87 Buck, R. 24–6 Butterworth, J. 45 Campbell, C. 92 Carter, J. 59 Chappell, K. 83 choice 43–4 choreography see collaboration; community engagement circle pedagogy (Hip Hop) 89–90, 96; breaking 92–3; detection 92–4; expression 90–2, 94; reflection 91–2, 94–5 citizenship, aesthetic education 17–19 civic engagement 1, 86–7 classroom practice 9–11 coaction 46 cognition 50–1; aesthetic education 14–15 collaboration 41–3, 65, 84; knowledge creation 51–3; listening and Being Present 46–9, 52–3; rehearsal 43–4, 53–5; relational being 45–6; thinking together 44–51; Voice and Bodying 49–51, 53 Collins, P.H. 16–17 Common 94 communication see collaboration

9

Index 99 community engagement 19, 80–1, 86–7; creative projects 84–6; curriculum 81–2; exploration and empowerment 82–4; servicelearning 86–7; see also circle pedagogy (Hip Hop) consensus process 65, 76–7 conservative think tanks 5–6 constructivism 17–18 creative community projects 84–6 Creative Process Mentoring (CPM) 54 critical literacy 27 critical pedagogy 1, 60, 66 dance appreciation and dance history 71–2; body type and ability 76; group dynamics 76–7; library research 73–4; pedagogical reflections 77–8; politics 75; previous approaches 72–3; religion 74; see also circle pedagogy (Hip Hop) Dance Exchange 81–2 dance history see dance appreciation and dance history dance teachers see African dances dancemaking 42–3 Davis, C.U. 58–69 Dawes, L. 44 DeFrantz, T. 59–60 democracy 1, 18, 65, 76–7 Denzin, N.K. 11 Deren, M. 61–2 Dewey, J. 18, 43 dialogue 46–53 DiAngelo, R. 62 diversity 24–6, 67 Dixon, B. 72 DJ Kool Herc 92, 95 Durden, M. 90 Ehrlich, T. 86 electoral participation 1 elemental synergy see circle pedagogy (Hip Hop) embodied knowledge 32–3 emotional attachment 47 empathy 15–17, 31, 52; see also thinking together empowerment 83–4, 95 engaged pedagogy 1–2

ethnocentrism 22–3, 30, 32, 36–7, 59–60; see also Whiteness and White privilege evaluation 61–2 exploration 83 expression 90–2 feminist pedagogy 2, 83–4 Fitzgerald, M. 82–3 Foster, S. 60 Frankenberg, R. 59 Freire, P. 60 funding 5–6 gender 76 Gergen, K. 44–6, 52 Giroux, H. 27 grassroots organising 19 Greene, M. 15–16, 18–19 group dynamics 76–7 Gunn, A. 12 habits 49–50, 54 Hackney, P. 61–2 Hatcher, J.A. 87 Heritage Foundation 5 Hickman, L. 43 higher education 66–8; see also community engagement; dance appreciation and dance history Hilsendager, S.C. 72 Hip Hop circle pedagogy 89–90, 96; breaking 92–3; detection 92–4; expression 90–2, 94; reflection 91–2, 94–5 history see dance appreciation and dance history Huckstep, J. 75 humanizing pedagogy 31 hypothetical construction 52–3 Ibrahim, A. 17–18 identity 30–1 identity categories 71–2, 77 imagination 16 inclusivity 14–15, 51–2, 67 individuality 45, 95 intersectionality 16–17 invisible voices 50–1 justice-oriented citizenship 17–19

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100 Index Kahne, J. 17 Kant, M. 75 Klein, T. 80–7 knowledge creation 43–4, 51–3, 92–3 Kraus, R. 72 KRS-One 93 Laban Movement Analysis 61–2 Lane, S. 86 Lanea Ayow, T. 24 Larsson, A. 44 Lavender, L. 54 learning modes 73, 75–6 Lerman, L. 81 library research 73–5 Lincoln, Y.S. 11 Listening and Being Present 42, 46–9, 52–3 Littleton, K. 44 love energy see circle pedagogy (Hip Hop) lyrics 94 Mabingo, A. 22–37 McCarthy-Brown, N. 31 MacPherson, T. 89–96 Manning, E. 14–15 Martin, N. 54–5 Massumi, B. 14–15 Mayen, G. 23 Meiners, J. 24–6 Mercer, N. 44 microaggressions 62 Moore, C.-L. 62 Morgan, I. 5–20 Mudimbe, V. 23 multiculturalism 16 Mulvihill, J.A. 41–55 music 32–3

positive interdependence 84 potential 14 power dynamics 53 Pre-K–12 Schools 64–6 questions (learners) 34–5 racism see ethnocentrism; Whiteness and White privilege Rasmussen, B. 59 Rautins, C. 17–18 reflection 91–2, 94–5 reflexivity 11, 62 rehearsal 43–50, 53–5 rehearsal criticism 54 reinforcement 55 relational being 42, 45–6, 50–1 relational knowledge 51–3 relationship building 16–17 religion 74 research projects 73–5 responsibility 1–2, 71–3, 77–8, 95 Risner, D. 16, 23 Rowe, N. 25

nativism 25

Said, E. 23 Sartwell, C. 49 Schupp, K. 1–4, 42, 78, 80, 83, 86 Sensoy, O. 62 service-learning 86–7 Sexton, J. 59 Shapiro, S. 22, 24–6 Shotter, J. 44, 47–50 social justice 13, 15, 73, 77–8, 92–4; citizenship 17–19; cognition 14–15; disrupting Whiteness 63–9; empathy 15–17 social responsibility 71–3, 77–8, 95 Stinson, S.W. 16, 23 Stock, C. 25 Sue, D.W. 62 Sullivan, S. 49, 52–3

Painter, N. 58–9 personal choice see choice personal responsibility 71–3, 77–8, 95 Phillips-Fein, J. 59 political/social moments and movements 8 politics 8, 11–12, 75, 78 positionality 62

Texas A&M International University see community engagement texture 14–15 thinking together 44–5; knowledge creation 51–3; Listening and Being Present 46–9, 52–3; relational being 45–6; strategies 54–5; Voice and Bodying 49–51, 53 transactional bodies 49–50, 52–3

10

Index 101 transformative learning 2, 26–7 Triggs, V. 14–15 Trump, D. 12, 25 Voice and Bodying 42, 49–51, 53 Walker, L. 24 Warburton, E. 25 Wegerif, R. 44 weight sharing 82, 84 Westheimer, J. 17

Whiteness and White privilege 58–9, 68–9; administration 63; curriculum 60, 63–4; disrupting/ interrupting 63–9; ethnocentrism 22–3, 30, 32, 36–7, 59–60; evaluation 61–2; higher education 66–8; language and terminology 59–60; pedagogy 60–1; Pre-K–12 Schools 64–6; White voices and allyship 63, 68–9 Yamamoto, K. 62

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