Democratic Bodies: Exemplary Practice and Democratic Education in a K–5 Dance Residency

Abstract

This research highlights a K–5 dance artist-in-residence as a form of democratic and exemplary dance education that ignited collaboration, promoted equity, fostered student autonomy, and demonstrated rigor in school curriculum. Through examining observation, interview, and performance-based data and calling upon critical, democratic education literature, the author found that the whole-school dance pedagogy and residency design nurtured and exemplified eight democratic signatures: access, participation, multiplicity, movement/change, space, process, conflict, and possibility. The author provides examples from the residency of how these signatures theoretically align with the data, demonstrating how these students engaged with curricular and dance content through embodied democratic practices. Ultimately, this model of best practices in dance education gives insight into how this whole-school dance residency model can help us to continue to bring dance to schools, exploring movement as a way of thinking, knowing, and communicating while creating artistic, democratic learning communities in schools.