| It has been the tradition within the dance community that one expresses with bodies rather than words. This is the primary goal of dance training, but the years of silent practice in studios can have a silencing effect on dancers. Recently, dance educators have begun to stress the need for developing discriminating judgment, for building theory, and for sustaining intellectual traditions in dance education. I believe that the intertwining of traditions of intellectualism and the artistry of dance composition could be furthered by including writing as a component in dance composition classes.;Using my background in teaching writing, writing-across-the-curriculum, aesthetics, dance criticism, dance education, and my experiences with choreography and dance composition classes, I created and documented a class in which I integrated the choreographic and writing processes as I facilitated a group of undergraduate dancers. Using action research, I studied how dance students and their teacher used and experienced writing workshop techniques, including freewriting, group work, discussion, interaction, and journal-keeping. As the teacher/researcher, I used the qualitative research methods of participant observation and ethnographic interviewing. The study should provide accounts of how writing and workshopping methods are experienced for liberal arts, non-dance major, college-level dance students' dance-making processes so that we can better understand language use and language acquisition in the dance classroom.;I have been guided by one main question: How do students and their teacher experience a dance composition class that has a writing workshop component? To answer this question I have described students' ideas about their dances, dance-making, and dance in general. The students relate the workshopping experiences to the development of their dances; how they experience acquisition of language to discuss dances; how they experience workshopping, including partnering, group assignments, talking, and writing before and after discussion; and how they describe the exercises used in the study in relation to general education courses and prior dance experiences. This study may provide a much needed approach for accessing a mode of developing discriminating judgment, for building theory, and in general, for sustaining intellectual traditions in dance education. |
