Articulating the Power of Dance

Bibliographic Data

ID12928797
AuthorsBarbara Ridley (corresponding author)
Year2009
Volume1
Issue3
Pages333-344
Publication date2009-01-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePower and Education (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1757-7438 • E-ISSN: 1757-7438
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.2304/power.2009.1.3.333
OpenAlexW2091598812
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited26

Making some minor changes to the syllabus of a peripheral GCE subject – Advanced Level (A-level) Dance – would hardly seem to be of much importance to anyone except dance students and their teachers. But the loss of dance notation is not as unimportant as it might appear: there are implications for the status of dance in the curriculum, for its ability to attract a range of students and for the development of the subject itself. Whilst being a popular social activity, in UK schools dance is constructed as a physical subject with an aesthetic gloss, languishing at the bottom of the academic hierarchy. Dance as a discipline is marginalised in academic discourse as an ephemeral, performance-focused subject, its power articulated through the body. Yet dance is more than just performance: to dismiss it as purely bodies in action is to ignore not only the language of its own structural conventions but also the language in which it might be recorded. Using the notion of docile bodies, the author considers the centrality of the body as instrument in defining the power of dance and how Foucault's mechanisms of power and knowledge are exemplified in current conceptions of dance in education

Aesthetics · Art · Concert dance · Dance · Dance education · Hierarchy · Pedagogy · Political science · Sociology · Subject (documents · Syllabus · Visual arts · Diversity and Impact of Dance · Law · Physical Education and Pedagogy · Psychology · Sport and Mega-Event Impacts

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