Conference Poster Presentations

The last year has irrevocably changed the landscape of dance education. While the pandemic has challenged the ability to teach dance in familiar ways, we remain certain that dance education is essential to students’ physical, social, cognitive, and emotional health. As dance educators, we must not only continue to deliver the highest quality dance education under challenging conditions, but also stand up for our students and the value that dance education adds to their lives. The 2021 NDEO Virtual National Conference, with the theme of Telling Our Stories: The Essentiality of Dance Education in Changing Times, will highlight the need to advocate for our field in these financially and socially difficult times. We will gather to explore stories of the power of dance education, how we tell those stories, who tells them, and how those stories have been shaped and changed over the last year.

We invite all dance educators interested in presenting at this virtual conference to submit poster proposals. Some questions you may consider as you craft your poster proposal:

• Who tells stories in and about dance and dance education? Who benefits from the telling of those stories? Who is missing from those stories?
• How have the stories told in and about dance education affected how the field is perceived by the public? How does this perception influence the field and our work as dance educators?
• How can we include and uplift different perspectives within the field, and create welcoming spaces where all feel empowered to share their stories? For example, how can we better support BIPOC dancers, dancers with different body types, dancers with disabilities, LGBTQ+ dancers, and the aging population?
• What tools can we use to help dance students, families, administrators, schools, and communities better understand and advocate for the value of dance education, even under difficult circumstances? How can we use dance to serve our home communities, empowering those we live and work with to experience and value dance as an important part of their own lives and a vehicle for change?
• How can emerging and existing technology help us reimagine what dance education looks like? How can we use technology to our advantage to better serve our students and our communities through dance?
• How can trauma-based pedagogy and social-emotional learning support all students as they navigate current world events and changing circumstances?
• How can we respectfully embrace and appreciate non-Western dance styles and dance history in our studios and classrooms? How can we help our students to recognize that they belong to a powerful legacy of artists, scholars, and culture-bearers, while also acknowledging the flaws, shortcomings, and injustices that also make up our stories and those of other dance genres?
• How can we honor the synergy of the field and support other dance educators outside of our primary work environment, realizing that we are all dependent on one another to create a vibrant and vital dance community? How can we come together as a dance education community, listening to and honoring one another as we embrace our shared stories, and work to elevate stories and experiences that are different from our own?