Welcome to the EXPRESS DANCE web site.

We are pleased to announce that the first Express Dance Resource Book – Grades 4 to 12 – is ready and is already being used by teachers in their dance programs.

This first Express Dance Resource Book has been tuned especially for educators new to the method and provides three Levels of experience: Level I (with training wheels) takes you through the basic structure – the Warm-up and the first Movement Phrase.

Lesson Plans specifically designed for this Level ease the first time teacher into an easy five day unit of classes. Once you have taught a few units on Level I, you will naturally move to level II and introduce fresh movement material using Recipes – and then the fun begins.

Level III and IV bring new potential with the introduction of keeping Inventories, public performance in school concerts and spin-off activities.

Be sure to bookmark this site and please visit us again.

Carol Oriold, Allen and Karen Kaeja

The EXPRESS DANCE method is available for educators who teach the movement aspects of dance from grades 4-12.

This method offers a safe, creative and physically invigorating program of movement classes.

Teachers with no background or training in dance can now use the EXPRESS DANCE method and feel confident in meeting curriculum requirements and expectations.

Allen and Karen Kaeja have developed the EXPRESS DANCE method through their teaching experience in schools. They describe the motivation for designing EXPRESS DANCE:

Dance is human gesture and gesture has been the principal mode of communications among human beings since the beginning of time. Having insight and understanding of human gesture is essential to life and the ability to communicate. Express Dance is not an attempt to provide dance training. The purpose of the method is to help students understand their physical potential and how that potential can be used as a means of self-expression.
 

EXPRESS DANCE classes provide students with the experience of creating movement within a structured and cooperative environment. The teacher’s role is to act as a facilitator within this structure and motivate students to achieve success.

EXPRESS DANCE does not require students to have previous dance training. The dance material produced comes from the creative work of the students – one of the reasons why learners of all abilities have successfully participated in EXPRESS DANCE classes.

The teacher can use the structured format of EXPRESS DANCE in the classroom or gymnasium. Students invent Movement Phrases in a specific order, then combine these with variations, forming them into a dance. During one teaching unit a class will build an inventory of dances that can be performed in school concerts – an important outcome in the dance curriculum.

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