Dance is a way of knowing

and communicating. All

societies use dance to
communicate on both personal
and cultural levels and to meet
physical and spiritual needs.
Dance, as with all the arts, has
its own language..
 Culture and Dance
• Nearly all cultures
incorporate dance in
some way.
• Dance is a major
component of many
cultures.
• Dance is often used to
communicate or celebrate.
Dance is often used to tell a story

Like a story or a book,

each dance has a
beginning, middle, and
an end. Dance is made
up “movement
materials”, connected
into “phrases” and put
together into a
complete dance.
How is a dance created?
Dances are created by
combining
locomotor and non
locomotor
movements.

AH-M-2.1.34
 All dance movements can be
labeled as locomotor or non -
locomotor.
NON-LOCOMOTOR-movements
that do not change location

LOCOMOTOR-
movements that
travel AH-E-2.1.31
 Locomotor Movements
Dancers using locomotor
movements may walk, run,
skip, hop, jump, slide`, or
gallop.. These movements
may be high (possibly
indicating joy), medium, or
low (possibly indicating
sadness.)
 Non-locomotor Movements
Dancers are using
non-locomotor
movements when they
stay in one place but
bend, stretch, twist, or
swing their body.
 Elements:

• Remember: STEBG
• Space, Timing, Energy,
Bodily Shapes, Group
shapes.
 - The area that the dance
performers occupy and
Space where they move.

- The performers can go

forward, backward,
diagonal, circular, and so
on.
 • The movements in timing
can be executed in varying
Timing tempo (speed).

• Performers move with

tempo of an underlying
sound known as beat or
pulse
 Dance Energies (Force)
• Energy: Degree of muscular
tension and use of energy while
moving.
• It refers to the force of an action.

Movements are propelled by energy or

force. This force can either initiate or
stop an action. Dance uses different
energies. Varied use of these minimizes
the monotony of the movements in the
performance.
 Bodily shapes
• It refers to how the entire body is
molded in space or the configuration of
body parts. The body can be rounded,
angular, or the combination of the two.
• Other body shapes can be from wide to
narrow and from high to low. They can
be symmetrical and asymmetrical.
Symmetrical

• Balance shape
• Movements are
identical or
similar on both
sides
Asymmetrical

• Unbalance shapes.
• Movements of the
body do not match.
• Completely
different from each
other .
 GROUP SHAPES
• In this element, a group of dancers
perform movements in different group
shapes/ they are arranges in ways that
are wide, narrow, rounded, angular,
symmetrical, or asymmetrical, and are
viewed together as a total picture or
arrangement.
Asymmetrical

• Asymmetrical,
Rounded Group
shapes .
Symmetrical

• Symmetrical,
narrow group
shapes.
 List all the five dancing elements in
Activity: the video. Describe their purposes
and how the dancers use them.