LibGuides: Dance / Drama: VET Dance

Dance Resources

AusDance: Safe Dance fact sheets
A collection of fact sheets created by AusDance to inform and promote safe dancing.
Dance Health
A collection of dance health articles from Dance Informa magazine.
Dancing - preventing injury
A fantastic resource from the Better Health Channel outlining all the strategies you can employ to minimise the risk of injury while dancing.
Safe Dance Practice: What Is It And Why Do We Need It?
The term “safe dance practice” often conjures up the vision of a checklist of boring, restrictive, and often unnecessary health and safety regulations. Fortunately, the upsurge of interest and increasing knowledge in safe dance practice will help us to do exactly the opposite.
Dancer health and safety: Applying knowledge early to help forge a long-lasting career
An informative article from One Dance UK about taking steps to look after yourself while young so you can avoid problems later in your dance career.
Stretching by Guest Blogger and SiDI Provider Janine Bryant
An article about stretching on the Safe in Dance International website, outlining why you should stretch and how to stretch safely.
The Guardian: Ballet companies must stop wrecking our bodies, warns Russian star
Irina Kolesnikova, who performs at London’s Coliseum in August, says dancers should be nurtured, not pushed to the limits

The Choreographer's Toolbox: Elements of Composition
A comprehensive guide to the elements of dance, from the Canadian National Arts Centre.
The Elements of Dance
Explains the elements of dance using the BASTE (Body, Actions, Space, Time, Energy) framework, includes videos and analysis tools.
Music as Dance's Muse
An examination of how music informs the creation of dance pieces, with reference to different choreographers.

Britannica School: Dance notation
A guide to dance notation from Britannica School.
The Paris Review: How to Write a Dance
This article gives a general overview of dance notation with a focus on its history.
What is Benesh Movement Notation?
Learn about the main form of dance notation, Benesh Movement Notation.
Britannica School: Labanotation
The Britannica School entry for Labanotation, a system of recording human movement, originated by the Hungarian-born dance theorist Rudolf Laban. This is the second main form of dance notation.

VCE VET Dance
The Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority website for VCE Dance, it contains a lot of information and examples of past exams.
Dance (VCE VET) – Exams and Examination Reports
A collection of VCE VET exams and exam reports from previous years, made available by the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority.
Trainee Dancer (contemporary)
This website from the Australian Apprenticeships and Traineeships Information Service (AATIS) provides information about potential contemporary dance career paths you can pursue with a Cert. II in Dance.
Trainee Dancer (musical theatre)
This website from the Australian Apprenticeships and Traineeships Information Service (AATIS) provides information about potential musical theatre dance career paths you can pursue with a Cert. II in Dance.

Dance Evaluation Resources

Writing a Dance Critique
A guide to writing a dance critique from Dixie State University.
Guidelines for Viewing Dance and Writing Critiques for Dance Performances
A comprehensive guide to viewing and writing about dance performances.
iRubric: Dance Performance Evaluation Rubric
A dance assessment rubric you can refer to as an example.

Tools and Methods for Evaluating Your Production and Performance
These forums aim to explore issues relating to dance and on 26 April 2010 the focus was on developing professional practice in production, with guest speakers Lyne Pringle and Dawn Sanders. Following the forum there was a general discussion. This resource has been produced from the excellent forum discussion in order to share ideas and support the industry.
How to evaluate a performance/competition – a questionnaire
An underrated, yet very important opportunity for a dancer happens in the days that follow a big event. It’s during these moments where you have a clear recollection of your mindset, abilities, and habits. If you use this time to evaluate your performance strategies you’ll likely gain valuable insights into how you can up your performance game in BIG ways.
Dance Performance Self Evaluation Rubric For Dance
A dance self evaluation rubric you can use as a reference.

Dance - Video and Evaluation
You can use this evaluation as a model to help you evaluate your own performance. Pay particular attention to the technical vocabulary and sentence structures.
Australian Curriculum Dance: Video examples of Arts practice
This suite of five videos supports the implementation of The Australian Curriculum: Dance by providing examples of dance practices in a classroom environment. Video 5 provides examples of how to address the Responding strand in Dance.
Writing About Dance
A short video that covers writing about dance (includes useful references in the video description).

Books in the NCC

Dance Anatomy by Jacqui Greene Haas
ISBN: 9781492545170
Featuring hundreds of full-color illustrations, Dance Anatomy presents more than 100 of the most effective dance, movement, and performance exercises, each designed to promote correct alignment, improved placement, proper breathing, and prevention of common injuries. The exercises are drawn in stunning detail, capturing the dancer in motion and highlighting the active muscles associated with each movement so you can develop and strengthen different areas of the body.
The Mythology of Dance (eBook) by Harry Eiss
ISBN: 1299974457
This book explores how dance gives shape to those human needs and how it reflects, and even creates, the maps of meaning and value that structure our lives. Though the volume looks at all the forms of dance, it focuses on three main categories in particular: religious, social, and artistic. Since the American Musical and subsequent Musical Videos have both reflected and influenced our current world, they receive the most space such acclaimed performers as Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Judy Garland, Ricky Nelson, Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson, such important composers and lyrists as Gershwin, Rodgers-and-Hammerstein, Porter, Berlin, Webber, Bernstein, the Beatles, and the Who, and such choreographers as Graham, Balanchine, Robbins and Fosse are examined in particular detail.

Analyse websites

Learn to give a CRAAP.

Now that we've got your attention, use this acronym to evaluate the information you find on the web.

C is for currency. When was the website last updated?

R is for relevance. Is the information useful to you?

A is for authority. Who is publishing the information? If it's from Wikipedia, it could be anyone and is not a reliable source.

A is for accuracy. Think about who published it, and if they are likely to be correct. Is a celebrity or a doctor more likely to give accurate health information? Are there references?

P is for purpose or possible bias. Is the author’s purpose to sell, persuade, entertain, or inform?

Dance / Drama: VET Dance

Dance Resources

Dance Evaluation Resources

Books in the NCC

Analyse websites

Learn to give a CRAAP.

Attributions