Dance
Drama
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The panoramic photographs of Manitoba landscapes in the website banners are used with the kind permission of © Stan Milosevic.

The “landscape” images and metaphor illustrated in the website banners represent current understandings about curriculum presented in the “Guiding Principles for WNCP Curriculum Framework Projects” (Western and Northern Canadian Protocol, 2011).

New ways of thinking about curriculum involve a “shift in the images we use, away from knowledge pictured as fragmented pieces put together, one piece at a time, in a linear fashion on an assembly line, to an image of knowledge as a complex organic network organized into living fields, territories or 'landscapes'. Learning about these living fields of knowledge requires: 'learning the landscape'.”

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Dance

Rationale for Dance Education

Dance is a vital part of every student's education and contributes to deep and enduring student engagement that leads to learning success. Dance education develops unique, powerful, and multiple ways of perceiving, interpreting, knowing, representing, and communicating understandings about self and the world. Through dance experiences, students have opportunities to think creatively, explore ideas and feelings, and develop emerging personal, cultural, and social identities.

Dance involves educating learners through the medium of movement, which encompasses performing, creating, and valuing dance experiences. Socialization and interaction are central features of dance as a group experience. as a distinct mode of knowing, dance is a catalyst for wondering, imagining, exploring, and learning that is mediated through socio-emotional and bodily-kinesthetic processes. the fusion of body action and cognition manifested in the dance Framework promotes self-initiated learning, active problem solving, openness, collaboration, innovation, socialization, empathy, flexibility, critical and divergent thinking, and risk taking. Dance has the potential to promote responsibility and leadership and to prepare and inspire future citizens of the world to understand and address the most critical challenges of their times.