10DAN - Dance

Performing Arts Whakataukī:

Te toi whakairo, ka ihiihi, ka wehiwehi, ka aweawe te ao katoa.

Artistic excellence makes the world sit up in wonder.

10 Dance

The creative skills and confidence developed in the Dance curriculum are valuable to students in all their studies and whatever career paths they choose. This semesterised course is aimed at all learners who want to explore self-expression and creative performance. Dance is an embodied language that recognises, values, and contributes to the unique bicultural and multicultural character of Aotearoa New Zealand. Dance students develop skills in movement, performance, and choreography. They learn to understand and respond to a variety of Dance genres and styles from a range of contexts, including but not limited to, Jazz Dance, Choreographic Creation and Cultural Dance. In Dance education, ākonga integrates thinking, moving, and feeling. We use Dance to express personal, group,  and cultural identities, to convey and interpret artistic ideas, and to strengthen social interaction

Units in this course include; 

Creative Dance

Māori artwork choreography: Students will explore their use of body, energy and space to create choreography inspired by stimulus of Māori artwork. They will         explore choreographic devices such as size, weight, timing, augmentation, cannon, unison, and embellishment. They will work in small groups to choreograph this dance which will have a narrative structure, aiming to communicate a story, theme, idea or emotion to the audience. Students will use their understanding of the dance elements to create innovative movement, as well as including their own dance knowledge.

Dance form - Contemporary

Alvin Ailey contemporary. Students will learn a sequence from Alvin Ailey’s “Revelation” and perform it to the class. They will research and discover the Ailey technique, working on contraction and isolation of body movements, size of body movements, unison, and form. 

Dance is a collaborative and creative subject which asks ākonga to think, communicate, and problemsove in real time. It will help with confidence, interpersonal relationship skills, body and spatial awareness. We encourage all students to choose dance as an option at Year 10, regardless of if they have taken dance before. It is a subject for everyone.