A Case Study Of American Dance Education In The 18～(th) Century

The theme of this paper is selected from my supervisor, Prof. Ou Jian-Ping's ten-year research project The History of Dance Education in the United States of America and my major goal is to clarify and affirm the status and development of the American dance education during that period of time, and consequently, obtain some beneficial inspirations to the contemporary dance education in China through investigating on developmental processes of the dance education's in the eighteenth century of the U.S.A. Giving priority to historical materials, the paper analyzes the historical context of American dance education in the Eighteenth Century. From the patterns of history-culture- education-dance education, the features and its effects of American dance education and the process of its occurrence, development, and prosperity have been systematically summed up and comprehensively investigated respectively.The present paper comprises five parts as the introduction, three chapters and the conclusion. The areas, situations, methods and significances of this research are clarified first in the introduction. Chapter One focuses on analyzing the historical development of American dance culture in the Eighteenth Century and the historical clues and forming factors of this dance culture are narrated simultaneously while the historical events in the U.S. as background are expatiated under the premise of forming and development of American dance cultures. Based on the way of comprehensive constructing, the teaching patterns, ideology, sites, female education and book publication in the American dance education of the Eighteenth Century, the specific developments of American dance cultures in this century are discussed in detail in Chapter Two. Chapter Three gives the induction and summary of the two previous chapters, in which the characteristics of American dance education, as well as its status and effects during the period of about 40 years are respectively explained, and from which the inevitability of its wide influences to the whole world is a natural outcome. The conclusion is the final summary of this paper with a wider angle and deeper thoughts which could certainly provide some healthy inspirations to the dance education of contemporary China.