Facilitating dance in general education through the arts-school partnership: a case study of Ballet Ireland’s primary school program

Abstract

ABSTRACT Dance as a performing art can be marginalized in general school arts provision, included in curriculum for its benefits in health and well-being rather than its intrinsic aesthetic appeal. In the Irish national curriculum, dance is primarily categorized as physical education, and can be culturally decontextualized because of this approach. Arts partnerships between dance organizations and schools can help address curricular neglect of aesthetic and cultural aspects of dance education. This paper presents a case study of an arts-school partnership established by Ballet Ireland in a Dublin primary school. While Ballet Ireland’s outreach work united an interdisciplinary arts approach to dance engagement with elements of authentic learning, this approach was complicated for their primary school program by the curricular position of dance in PE in Irish schools. A framing question for the study was the following: in what ways does the arts-school partnership work to establish dance as a meaningful subject in an Irish primary school context, among students and teachers? This question was explored in terms of the children and teachers’ affective and cognitive engagement with the dance classes. Methods included unstructured observations of classes and one-on-one and focus group interviews with teachers and students involved in the programme.