African American Dance

This essay presents the author’s personal beliefs on how dance has influenced and empowered her as a black woman. The essay explains how the author’s dance company sole focus is to present a venue to engage dance that speaks to social justice issues and the personal experience of being Black in America. In addition, the essay speaks on the historical application of African dances compared to African American dances as a social movement.

An essay on dance education research is a relevant topic to address social terrors in the lives of black girls and women. Often critical dance education research has not looked a pond as critical analysis of research as a counter-narrative of marginalized subjects. With that said, I will review each paragraph

The author states that conducting research is important to understand the legacy of social dance in the African American community. However, there is no mention of what form of research was performed to determine the benefits of African American social dancing.

The author explains how her company has evolved and created BLACK GIRL: Linguistic Play (BG:LP) to evoke childhood memories and self-discovery in the third paragraph. The author does not explain “rhythmic play” philosophy and how this relates to dance as a play based teaching methodology that could be a teaching tool for black girls and black women. In the first sentence, it should state “justice” instead of “justices,” also the capitalization of Black is inconsistent.

The fourth paragraph defines one form of social dance, however, it does not relate this to the overall theme of black girls and women. The author needs to explain how does this particular form of social dance help them? In the next paragraph, the author cites a book on games black girl’s play and explains this is her inspiration and central focus to her work. Yet, there is still no definition of methodology and how “play” is used which can confuse the reader. Play based philosophy is an important research method and the author has to explain how this correlates with social dance, trauma, dance education, and black girls in the

It would be helpful if the author mentioned this earlier and elaborate more on the education initiative for these girls. The concluding paragraph gives a general view of movement and history, but does not answer the “So What?” and “Why should anybody care?”

The essay demonstrates the aim of the dance company, however, it does not explore how this relates to dance education and research to help the reader understand black girls daily life experiences in the community. The author is clear about African American dance, heritage, different forms of dance, methods of teaching dance, but vaguely touch on what are the challenges, terror, and trauma black girls and women face. Even though, the author mentions an education initiative it is not clear how her dance company relates to a K-20 curriculum and pedagogy in the school or community.

This essay has an important message and would be of great interest to the reader. However, the thesis is not well presented and the methodology is not clear, I recommend, “Reconsideration after major revisions.” Overall, the subject of dance education within academia is a scholarly topic often not address in k-20 educational curricula or institutions. It is important to have essays, which advance dance education in the arts to communicate meaning about the human