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Achievement Standard, Proficient:

• Students demonstrate the following movement skills and explain the underlying principles: alignment, balance, initiation of movement, articulation of isolated body parts, weight shift, elevation and landing, fall and recovery
• Students accurately identify and demonstrate basic dance steps, positions, and patterns for dance from two different styles or traditions (e.g., ballet, square, Ghanasian, Middle Eastern, modern)
• Students accurately transfer a spatial pattern from the visual to the kinesthetic
• Students accurately transfer a rhythmic pattern from the aural to the kinesthetic
• Students identify and clearly demonstrate a range of dynamics / movement qualities
• Students demonstrate increasing kinesthetic awareness, concentration, and focus in performing movement skills
• Students demonstrate accurate memorization and reproduction of movement sequences
• Students describe the action and movement elements observed in a dance, using appropriate movement/dance vocabulary

• Students clearly demonstrate the principles of contrast and transition
• Students effectively demonstrate the processes of reordering and chance
• Students successfully demonstrate the structures or forms of AB, ABA, canon, call and response, and narrative
• Students demonstrate the ability to work cooperatively in a small group during the choreographic process
• Students demonstrate the following partner skills in a visually interesting way: creating contrasting and complementary shapes, taking and supporting weight

• Students effectively demonstrate the difference between pantomiming and abstracting a gesture
• Students observe and explain how different accompaniment (such as sound, music, spoken text) can affect the meaning of a dance
• Students demonstrate and/or explain how lighting and costuming can contribute to the meaning of a dance
• Students create a dance that successfully communicates a topic of personal significance

• Students create a movement problem and demonstrate multiple solutions; choose the most interesting solutions and discuss the reasons for their choice
• Students demonstrate appropriate audience behavior in watching dance performances; discuss their opinions about the dances with their peers in a supportive and constructive way
• Students compare and contrast two dance compositions in terms of space (such as shape and pathways), time (such as rhythm and tempo), and force/energy (movement qualities)
• Students identify possible aesthetic criteria for evaluating dance (such as skill of performers, originality, visual and/or emotional impact, variety and contrast)

• Students competently perform folk and/or classical dances from various cultures; describe similarities and differences in steps and movement styles
• Students competently perform folk, social, and/or theatrical dances from a broad spectrum of twentieth-century America
• Students learn from resources in their own community (such as people, books, videos) a folk dance of a different culture or a social dance of a different time period and the cultural/historical context of that dance, effectively sharing the dance and its context with their peers
• Students accurately describe the role of dance in at least two different cultures or time periods

• Students identify at least three personal goals to improve themselves as dancers and steps they are taking to reach those goals
• Students explain strategies to prevent dance injuries
• Students create their own warm-up and discuss how that warm-up prepares the body and mind for expressive purposes

• Students create a project that reveals similarities and differences between the arts
• Students cite examples of concepts used in dance and another discipline outside the arts (such as balance, shape, and pattern)
• Students observe the same dance both live and recorded on video; compare and contrast the aesthetic impact of the two observations