Dance Appreciation

Course Description

Dance Appreciation is a lecture-based course exploring dance appreciation with extensive use of audio/visual materials which highlight the development of contemporary dance in America. The course contributes to satisfying the Gordon Rule (State Rule 6A-10.030) writing requirement.

Within the SCNS taxonomy, DAN is the Dance prefix for non-technique courses. Daytona State publishes this at 3 credits, offered fall and spring.

⚠ No dance experience is required or expected, and this is not a technique class — it is a lecture course about watching, describing, and writing about dance. It is a genuinely good general education choice, because it satisfies both a humanities and a writing requirement while teaching a skill most people never acquire: the ability to describe what a body is doing and why it produces the effect it does. Writing about movement is unusually difficult, which is exactly why it develops the writing.

Daytona State does not publish a lecture and laboratory split for its dance courses. This course is described in the catalog as lecture-based, and the institution's lecture convention is 15 contact hours per credit — the live AMH2010 and AMH2020, also lecture courses carrying Gordon Rule credit, are both published at 3 credits and 45 hours. This course is priced at that convention.

Learning Outcomes

Required Outcomes

• Describe the elements of dance: body, action, space, time, and energy.
• Observe a dance work attentively and describe what happens in it.
• Use accurate vocabulary to describe movement.
• Distinguish description, analysis, interpretation, and evaluation.
• Analyse choreographic structure and compositional choices.
• Describe the relationship between dance, music, and design.
• Describe major genres and forms of dance.
• Describe the development of concert dance in America.
• Describe the emergence and character of modern dance.
• Describe key figures in American modern and contemporary dance.
• Describe ballet's history and its relationship to modern forms.
• Describe jazz, tap, and their roots in African American traditions.
• Describe social and vernacular dance forms and their significance.
• Describe world dance traditions and their cultural contexts.
• Describe dance in musical theatre and in film.
• Describe how dance reflects and responds to social change.
• Describe the role of race, gender, and identity in dance history.
• Describe the economics and institutions of professional dance.
• Describe the roles involved in producing a dance work.
• Attend and respond critically to a live performance.
• Write a substantiated critical response to a work.
• Support interpretive claims with observed evidence.
• Cite sources accurately using an accepted style.
• Describe how dance is documented and preserved.

Optional Outcomes

• Describe dance criticism as a form.
• Describe dance notation systems.
• Describe screendance and dance for camera.
• Describe community and participatory dance practice.
• Describe dance therapy and applied dance.
• Describe current issues in the dance field.

Major Topics

Required Topics

• Elements of dance
• Attentive observation
• Movement vocabulary
• Description, analysis, interpretation, evaluation
• Choreographic structure
• Dance, music, and design
• Genres and forms
• American concert dance
• The emergence of modern dance
• Key figures
• Ballet and its relationship to modern forms
• Jazz, tap, and African American traditions
• Social and vernacular dance
• World dance traditions
• Dance in musical theatre and film
• Dance and social change
• Race, gender, and identity in dance
• Economics and institutions
• Roles in producing a work
• Responding to live performance
• Critical writing
• Evidence for interpretive claims
• Citation
• Documentation and preservation

Optional Topics

• Dance criticism
• Notation systems
• Screendance
• Community and participatory dance
• Dance therapy and applied dance
• Current issues in the field

Resources & Tools

• Your department's productions — audition, crew, and stage manage. Practical production credit is what the field actually recruits on, and it is free and available now.
• Recordings of professional work — many companies and archives stream productions, and college libraries frequently carry theatre and dance video databases at no cost to students.
• Your college's counselling and health services — free and confidential; relevant to a field with real physical and emotional demands.
• Local and regional companies — volunteering, ushering, or crewing gets you inside a working organisation and in front of people who hire.
• Florida's theme park and cruise line auditions — posted publicly and held regularly; substantial, steady, paid performance work that many students never think to pursue.
• Actors' Equity Association, SAG-AFTRA, and IATSE — the professional unions; understand what membership means and when it makes sense before you are eligible.
• Keep a portfolio from the first term — video, photographs, programmes, and a maintained resume.
• International Association for Dance Medicine and Science (iadms.org) — free resource papers on injury prevention, conditioning, and dancer health; the best available material on training safely.
• Your college's fitness centre and any athletic training staff — frequently free to students and rarely used by dancers who would benefit most.
• Your college library's performing arts video databases — free with enrolment, and frequently containing complete recorded productions that would otherwise be inaccessible.
• Jacob's Pillow Dance Interactive (danceinteractive.jacobspillow.org) — free curated archival video with commentary; outstanding for this course.
• Local and regional dance companies — student tickets are usually inexpensive, and seeing live work is not substitutable by video.

Career Pathways

• Actor — SOC 27-2011.
• Dancer — SOC 27-2031; and choreographer, SOC 27-2032.
• Producer and director — SOC 27-2012.
• Stage manager and production management — consistently more employable than performance and frequently overlooked by students.
• Technical theatre — lighting, sound, scenery, costume, and rigging; steady work and transferable to live events.
• Theme park and cruise line entertainment — a major Florida employer of performers, technicians, and stage management.
• Live events, corporate production, and conference work — large, year-round, and well paid.
• Teaching artist, studio instruction, and K-12 arts teaching — the latter requires teacher certification.
• Arts administration, marketing, and development — every company needs these and they are steadier than performance.
• Applied and healthcare performance work — standardised patient programmes, simulation, and training scenarios; paid, local, and genuinely available.
• Transfer to a bachelor's programme in theatre, dance, or musical theatre.
• Dance studio teaching — a substantial and accessible employment sector, particularly in Florida's residential communities.
• Fitness, Pilates, yoga, and conditioning instruction — certification-based, flexible, and a common complement to performance work.

Special Information

⚠ Describe before you interpret — the discipline of this course in one habit

• The commonest weakness in student writing about the arts is jumping straight to what a work means, with no account of what actually happened in it. An interpretation without description is an assertion.
• Write down what you saw first: how many dancers, what the movement did, where it happened in the space, how fast, to what sound, with what changes. That evidence is what an argument is built from.
• Learn the vocabulary and use it precisely. "She moved gracefully" conveys almost nothing; describing the actual shape, direction, dynamic, and duration conveys a great deal.
• ⚠ Separate what the work did from whether you enjoyed it. Both are legitimate; conflating them produces reviews rather than analysis.
• Watch a work more than once when you can. A first viewing catches the overall shape; a second catches the choices.
• Take notes during, not after. Memory reorganises a performance into a story within minutes.
• See something live during the term. Video flattens dance badly — it loses scale, depth, peripheral events, and the physical presence that is much of the point.
• Use the writing centre. This is a Gordon Rule course, and writing about movement is genuinely hard.

⚠ This course carries Gordon Rule writing credit

• Daytona State states that this course contributes to satisfying the writing requirement of State Board of Education Rule 6A-10.030 — the requirement long known as the Gordon Rule.
• That makes it worth more than an equivalent elective, because it satisfies two requirements at once. Confirm with an advisor how it fits your particular plan before assuming it.
• ⚠ It also means substantial writing is required, with a minimum volume of written work and a standard it must meet. Students who choose the course expecting a lecture-and-test format are regularly surprised.
• Start writing early and use the writing centre. It is free, you have already paid for it, and it is used most by the students who write best.
• ⚠ Rule 11 applies — Florida's general education and Gordon Rule provisions have changed in recent years. Verify current requirements with an advisor rather than relying on this guide.

⚠ An honest account of performing arts employment

• Performance work is intermittent, competitive, and unevenly paid, and most people who work in it also do other things. That is the normal shape of the career rather than a sign of failure, and knowing it in advance changes how you plan.
• Build the second and third skill deliberately. Teaching, stage management, technical work, arts administration, choreography, and directing are all adjacent, and the people who sustain careers in this field are usually the ones who can do several things.
• The transferable skills are real and employers value them — public presentation, collaboration under pressure, taking direction and criticism, meeting immovable deadlines, and performing when unwell or unprepared. Name them explicitly when applying for anything.
• Florida has a genuine market: theme parks and cruise lines are substantial and year-round employers of performers, technicians, and stage management, alongside regional theatre, education, and events. It is not New York, and it is a great deal steadier than New York.
• Learn the business side early — contracts, self-employment tax, invoicing, and keeping records. Most performers learn this the hard way.
• ⚠ Unpaid work has a place and it has limits. Student and community work builds craft and contacts; a professional production expecting free labour is a different matter.
• Keep documentation of everything you do — recordings, photographs, programmes, reviews. A portfolio is built continuously and cannot be assembled retrospectively.
• Health insurance and income stability deserve a plan, not optimism.

How Florida course levels affect transfer

The first digit of an SCNS number denotes the year of offering, not transferability. Courses at the 1000 and 2000 levels transfer transparently between Florida public institutions, and 3000 to 4000 is unproblematic since both are upper division. The boundary that actually matters is 2000 to 3000, where lower-division credit generally cannot satisfy an upper-division requirement.

DAN1100 is 3 credits and approximately 45 contact hours, offered fall and spring at Daytona State, and it carries Gordon Rule writing credit.

⚠ It is a lecture course — no dance experience is required. It is a strong general education choice because it satisfies two requirements at once.