British choreographer Kenneth MacMillan famously introduced narratives of rape and sexual assault to the ballet stage. One such ballet, Manon, has become a modern classic, performed in the repertory of dance companies worldwide. Through a feminist and queer lens, this article choreographically analyzes Manon’s third act, shedding light on its troubling portrayal of sex work, butch women, and sexual assault. The modern relevance of Manon and other MacMillan ballets invite us to question the place of these works in the #MeToo era of ballet.

Collaborative dance-making processes may be understood as a social experience as choreographers work with dancers to make movement for their dance work. This research focuses on the ‘tasking’ movement generation parts of the choreographic process, as it is one-way dancers creatively respond to the choreographer’s invitations, provocations, activities, or stimulus. Looking through a qualitative and constructivist methodology, the question guiding this research was: What are recent contemporary dance graduates’ experiences of creativity within the choreographic tasking process, and how do these experiences inform their perspectives of creativity? This research revealed four themes relating to the participants’ experiences of creativity in tasking processes: open and structured tasking, the choreographic climate, communication within relationships, and feeling valued and respected in the tasking process. This research is relevant to scholarship in other areas of collaborative creative processes, as well as wider global areas of arts education, management, philosophy and psychology.

Dance is a compulsory component of the Arts Curriculum in the primary years in Australia. Today, we have a renewed understanding of dance education that utilises experimentation, guided discovery, exploration and enhanced creative thinking skills (Isbell & Raines, 2007). There is much research that attests to the benefits of creative approaches to dance education (Gersak, 2012), however, pre-service teachers' perceptions of dance frequently misrepresent the area, often as a result of societal values, their own school experiences and the habitus that creates perceptions of dance in schools. This paper reports on a study that interviewed lecturers facilitating dance education units in teacher preparation courses in Queensland, Australia. They reflect upon the strategies they use to challenge preconceived ideas and stereotypes about dance and arts education. They also discuss opportunities for future developments in pre-service dance education and avenues of success they have experienced.

This research explores three community dance practitioners’ experiences of providing dance within prison environments in New Zealand/Aotearoa. The narratives of the community dance practitioners are drawn upon to uncover meanings and understandings around the challenges they faced when providing dance in prison environments. This article focuses on the community dance practitioners’ perceptions and attitudes, particularly in relation to their perceived roles, feelings of nervousness and a need to emotionally detach from the prison environment. Exploring these themes provides insight into ways community dance practitioners might approach dance practice within prison environments.

This article is an inquiry of thinking as moving and experiencing in order to posit dance making as a somatic practice. Theories including embodied cognition and somaesthetics are utilized to frame thinking and explore somatic work, namely the Alexander Technique. Dance making in groups is presented and considered through the author’s constructed lens of thinking and the Alexander Technique.