Creating High School Dance Programming: Comprehensive Dance Education Program or Dance/Drill Team? Or Both?

Abstract

Selecting high school dance education programming can be challenging, and the conversations around such programming have the capacity to dichotomize or value dance forms in varying ways. This article describes two dance programming choices for high schools: comprehensive dance education and dance/drill team. The authors define a comprehensive dance education program as an approach that teaches multiple and varied dance techniques through a historical, cultural, and inquiry-based pedagogy; they define a dance/drill team as a group of selected high school students who perform at school sporting events and competitions. This article analyzes each program’s attributes and limitations in relation to the National Core Arts Standards for Dance in an effort to support informed decision making when determining what is best for a specific high school. This work arose out of a panel discussion on drill team and high school dance programs at the 2017 National Dance Education Organization annual conference of which the authors were a part.