Dance in Schools - Integrating the Arts

Dance keeps students engaged in school, enhances learning when integrated into academic subjects, and improves overall school culture. Read the Evidence Report from NDEO.

Dance integrates kinesthetic learning with understanding. Learning the art of dance helps young children develop knowledge, skill, and understanding about the world. When children are provided with creative movement problems that involve the selection of movement choices, they learn to think in the concrete reality of movement.

Dance helps children develop literacy. To the young child, verbal language and movement are entwined. Preverbal movement expression does not cease when a child develops language. The road to literacy involves the translation of movement expression and communication into words. Learning language and learning dance are not separate threads, but are woven together and incorporated into a fabric of communication and understanding.

Dance is a natural method for learning and a basic form of cultural expression. Children learn movement patterns as readily as they learn language. Just as all societies create forms of visual representation or organize sounds into music, all cultures organize movement and rhythm into one or more forms of dance.