Dance
Health benefits of dance
Dancing is great for our health. It helps co-ordination, strength, stamina, flexibility and balance. It's good cardiovascular exercise and burns calories. If done regularly it improves our health in many ways including helping to prevent high blood pressure and heart disease and giving us healthier joints. It's also a different way to exercise the brain.
Through dance we get to meet lots of people from different cultures and walks of life. When we dance we need to collaborate with other people, so it's great for improving communication, leadership and teamwork skills. It's also a way of discovering music and drama. And it's fun and enjoyable!
Country dancing in school or as an after-school club
Why Dance? is a comprehensive book about traditional country dancing. Facts about the origins of the music and dances, fitting the dance to the music, dancing with adults and children and suggestions for arranging a barn dance are all included. Also supplied with the book are two CDs with sixteen exciting dance-length tracks played by country dance band The Catsfield Steamers. We have one copy of this resource, if you are from a school in Cornwall and you'd like to borrow it, contact us.
Essentially dance
This is an initiative to train school teachers to teach ballroom and Latin American dance within core PE provision. The training packages, founded in the National Curriculum and developed by dance professionals and PE experts, are delivered to teachers and non-teaching school staff in three stages - beginners, intermediate and advanced - and are then suitable for Key Stages 1 to 5.
The programme is available to schools in England and Wales through School Sports Partnerships. Training in an area is delivered to staff from ten schools, including both secondaries and primaries. For more information and case studies, go to Essentially Dance.
Let's dance with Change4Life
The Change4Life campaign has produced a toolkit Let's dance with Change4Life to help families get up and about through dance. There are information and activity sheets on ballet, ballroom dancing, cheerleading, modern dance, Rock'n'Roll and street dancing. Read more and download the resources.
Information for schools about dance
In order to help schools build links with dance organisations and individuals, the DCMS published Dance Links.
Here are some useful dance weblinks:
