The Value of Integrating Floorplans Into a Creative Dance Course

Background/Purpose

This is a qualitative study to determine student perceptions of the value of integrating floorplans into a creative dance course. Two classes totaling 57 students at a technological university in the United States were invited to comment on the usefulness of floorplans as an educational tool in their dance-making. Since the course is part of the university core curriculum, students display a broad range of dance experience, novice dancers to advanced-level dancers, and diverse interests as students represent all undergraduate majors. These two classes represented 30 different majors. Drawing floorplans is not commonly used as an educational tool in a creative dance class. Reasons may include that dance educators have not applied this tool themselves, have no evidence that it would be useful, assume it to be a laborious task, and/or believe that their dance students just want to move. Therefore it was anticipated that the advanced-level dancers would have negative responses to the usefulness of floorplans and many novice dancers would find them useful.

Method

The survey compiled the students' major and prior dance and movement experience in addition to reflections on the value of floorplans. There were 50 responders including 22 novice dancers and 7 experienced dancers (more than seven years of formal dance training).

Analysis/Results

Forty-one students responded positively finding floorplans helpful in planning their dances, serving as a memory aid, and understanding music rhythm and meter. Nine students responded negatively stating that although floorplans were somewhat beneficial in the planning stage of a dance, drawing them was tedious and a memory aid was unnecessary. The negative responses were from 6 novice dancers and 3 experienced dancers. The majors of the negative responders were: Apparel Housing & Resource Management, (2) Biological Sciences, Chemical Engineering, English, Marketing Management, (2) Political Science, and Sociology. Majors in Biological Sciences, Marketing Management, and Political Science also appeared in the positive responses. There was only one student enrolled in the classes from each of the other majors; therefore, no conclusions could be discerned.

Conclusions

In summary, the negative responses were from both novice dancers and experienced dancers. This suggests that the students' perception of floorplans may be unrelated to the amount of dance training. The data was inconclusive in identifying a correlation between specific majors and student responses. The study did validate that floorplans as a component of the creative dance assignments are beneficial to most students.