Monday, April 29 marks International Dance Day, as it has every year since 2013. This day of celebration is meant to make the public more aware of the importance and universality of dance.
Dance is playing a growing role in educational programs, as both a physical activity and an art form. That’s why Lü has decided to showcase its many benefits, which have been emphasized by recent research in the field.
Dance and child development
Many programs, including SHAPE America, recognize the value of dance for students’ overall development. This discipline affects three key domains: psychomotor, cognitive, and affective development.
Dance practice promotes the acquisition of motor skills like agility, speed, strength, and coordination (Grčić et al., 2014).
Shen et al. (2020) also note that hip-hop helps promote:
- individual perception
- body balance
- hand-eye coordination
- emotional stability
The skills developed through dance aren’t limited to that discipline, either. They’re transferable to a number of other everyday situations that may be related to physical activity or not.
The study by Shen et al. (2020) also highlights the benefits of street dance for preschool children. It found that students who dance show significant improvement in:
- inhibition control
- working memory
- cognitive flexibility
Interestingly, learners with less developed executive functions benefited more from the program.
Lü offers several applications that feature dance to help develop these skills. What’s more, your device has a native YouTube application so you can play your favorite dance routines.
Grööve also offers several options to make it easier to learn a dance. The application has choreography at 3 different difficulty levels, and its learning mode lets you record the group’s progress as they learn the steps.
Several other features are also available to make teaching easier:
- adjust the speed of the movements
- use the metronome
- practice the movement with or without music
- practice short sequences of movements
Dance and motivation
The art of movement in the form of folk and traditional dances is an integral part of everyday life for a large part of the world’s population, making it an appealing activity for children. Dance motivates and engages young people through its variety, ease of learning, and playfulness.
It can also be a very creative art form. It gives people the chance to get carried away by the rhythm of the music, create and express themselves freely through movement, and design their own choreography alone or in a team. Working creatively in a team fosters the development of soft skills like communication, cooperation, and leadership.
Dance is also a powerful communication tool, particularly when it comes to expressing emotions. Body movement can be used to externalize a range of emotions, from the simplest to the most complex, all while reducing stress.
Introduce your students to different Dancing kicks, then survey them on how they’re mastering the movements.
Let your students create their own emotion-inspired dance with Dancing emotions in Wörlds, which combines visuals and music.
Opening up to the world through dance
Dance is a valuable tool for celebrating all cultures. Salsa, hula, zaouli, and hopak are just a few of the dances that can be used to honor diversity and inclusion in your classes and expand your students’ horizons.
In short, dance is a particularly playful and creative type of physical activity that is well worth including in physical education, offering students a holistic and motivating learning experience. We wish you an excellent International Dance Day and hope that our “dance” tagged content in the Lü Community will inspire you to continue this rhythmic adventure throughout the year!