DANCE IN EDUCATION

Bravo has been a dance educator for over 30 years. She has conducted movement programs at the University of Texas at Austin School of Opera and Department of Theatre and Dance, Austin Community College, St. Edward’s University, St. Andrew’s Episcopalian High School and Johnston High School in Austin. She designed and taught the dance program at St. Michael’s Academy for 12 years. Since 1995 Bravo has taught in the Austin ISD system, currently she teaches both her educational programs for Blackshear Fine Arts Academy, PreK to 5th grade. And she teaches teachers in Europe every summer, most notably at The Palucca University of Dance Dresden, in the master degree programmes for Dance Teachers.

About my programs:

Leaps and No Bounds [Movement Literacy]

for young students, 4 to 7 years of age

&

Learning to Dance, Dancing to Learn [Academic teaching through designed movement fluency ]

for students age 4 and above

Each program delivers physical skills and conceptual content specifically structured to age-appropriate levels. These programs encourage curiosity and skillful mobility. Seldom but a few topics introduce occasional improvisational elements.

Both programs, Leaps and No Bounds (LANB) and Learning to Dance, Dancing to Learn (LTD, DTL) are in-school programs of “movement immersion” that integrates academic, cultural, and social information subjects into movement-based lessons. These classes function as a complement and enhancement to school studies performed in the academic classroom. This program allows children to experience the creative magic of dance while simultaneously absorbing scholarly subjects such as Math, Science, Language Arts and Social Studies.

The arts have a unique ability to capture children’s imaginations, to motivate them to strive for excellence and to inspire them to see and experience themselves and the world around them from new perspectives.

The LANB and LTD, DTL programs were inspired by the fact that the performing arts have been employed through history, in both old and young cultures, to teach children much of the knowledge they will need to interact and flourish in their surroundings.

My programs are designed to give children the opportunity to experience a joyful and innovative way of gaining, absorbing, and applying knowledge while discovering and increasing their sense of self-knowledge, self-reliance, and self-refinement. This system engages the children’s kinesthetic, rhythmic, logical, linguistic, naturalistic, and spatial learning modalities, as well as their interpersonal and intrapersonal skills. Through dance, our instructors teach all
of the academic topics that students are taught in the regular classroom IN DEPTH (Math, Science, Language and Social Studies).

Through these lessons students learn that movement may represent and recreate physically the processes of all topics. First they learn specific choreography and, eventually they generate shapes and moves that illustrate their understanding of all elements of a topic.

 All aspects of the classes are fully choreographed and are designed to match or correspond directly to the subjects imparted by school systems. Our teachers are capable of creating movement signifiers and sequences for topics requested by teachers and administrators. In addition, the programs promote cultural awareness through the introduction of national/ethnic dances and traditions from various sectors of the world.

LANB & LTD, DTL reach children in six distinct ways:

• Demonstrating that learning is possible in many different modalities, providing students with an experiential form of learning and acquiring of higher thinking skills

• Experiencing learning through creative movement and expression demonstrates to the students that their physical and mental abilities are vast and interconnected

• Providing inherent health benefits through content-based physical activity

• Integrating core curriculum through different learning methods

• Exposing students to diverse rhythms and cultures from around the world in order to learn about different social constructs

• Improving and strengthening interpersonal skills by providing students with a joyful form of non-competitive play and interaction