There is freedom and confidence in movement, from improvisation to polished group performances. Dance is an art form that finds originality through mistakes. You are encouraged to be creative, physical, expressive and a thinking dancer.
The course focuses on developing key dance skills: performance, choreography, and appreciation, which involves reviewing and interpreting professional dance pieces. It develops self-discipline to be able to critique and refine your own work. There is a huge sense of achievement, adrenalin and companionship in performing a piece you have created, rehearsed and feel proud of.
What is involved in the Dance course?
The course is split into three components.
Exploring the industry: In this unit you will look at professional dance in a variety of styles and how all the features of the piece work together to create something special. You will explore the style, ideas, influences, process and people involved in creating the piece.
Developing Skills and Techniques: You will participate in practical workshops to develop your dance skills towards learning and performing a professional group dance piece. You will review your progress and performance throughout the process.
Responding to a brief: Working as either a dancer or designer, you will be given a brief and a starting point to create a piece of choreography or design portfolio. This is group work where everyone is encouraged to contribute and work collaboratively to create an effective dance piece that clearly communicates an idea to the audience.
How will you be assessed?
The first two components are assessed by your teacher and evidence is created throughout the workshop lessons and the associated written work. You will produce a variety of evidence such as video recordings of practical work and performances, reflection sheets, milestone logs, presentations, logbooks and evaluations.
The final component is assessed by an external examiner by video. You will have 12 weeks to create and perform the piece. There are 3 written logs to complete alongside this which are written in supervised conditions, but you can use prepared notes.
What can you do with Dance in the future?
Skills learnt in Dance are transferrable such as self-discipline, resilience, communication, problem solving, teamwork, confidence and creativity. Those who study Dance may progress onto various pathways in the future such as performance, choreography, fitness and movement therapy. Many students have also completed this course as an enjoyable and creative outlet alongside more academic subjects.
BTEC Dance is a vocational course with lots of practical experience so it has natural progression to a BTEC Level 3 course or A level in Dance or Performing Arts. It is a strong foundation for those wishing to study dance or the performing arts at university or even the possibility of study at a national dance school.
What do you need to do to prepare for the course?
Try to develop and maintain your fitness as this is a physical course. Where possible, watch a variety of dance pieces online and at the theatre for choreographic inspiration. Participating in extra-curricular dance and performances would help to prepare you for after-school rehearsals and develop confidence in performing.
You will be successful in this course if you are committed to lessons with energy and enthusiasm. We will provide opportunities such as workshops with professional dance artists, and you will need to be open, positive and motivated to maximise your experiences and success.
Attendance to lessons is important as components are marked though work created in these. Most of the course is evidenced with written work alongside the practical work.
Student/Staff/Famous Person quote about the subject
“There are shortcuts to happiness and dancing is one of them!” “Dance to express, not to impress.” “Great dancers are not great because of their technique; they are great because of their passion.” –Martha Graham
This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Strictly Necessary Cookies
Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.
If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.
