Curriculum

Dance at St Peter’s offers students the facilities and expertise to develop their skills and creativity in a supportive learning environment.

Our Dance courses have a strong performance focus with opportunities provided throughout the year for students to dance to an audience. There are also significant opportunities for students’ to enhance their passion through the dance activities available at St Peter’s – the school production, dance troupes, cheerleading and Stage Challenge.

Dance is an aspect of the core subject, Performing Arts, in Years 7 to 9 for all students. Students have a lot of fun exploring dance as part of this holistic performance class.

Students may choose Dance as an option subject from Years 9 to 13.

In Years 9 and 10 Performance Dance focuses students on performance, composition and reflection. These courses offer a mix of practical and theoretical activities to develop students’ skills and technical knowledge. Students also develop self-confidence, self-discipline and teamwork. Choreography is introduced in Year 9 through exploring the elements of dance and studying cultural movement in Maori, Pacific Island, South African and Indian dance. In Year 10 students are exposed to a variety of genres, guest tutors, and dance techniques to equip and prepare them for NCEA and IB Dance.

In Years 11-13 NCEA Dance students develop literacy in dance as they learn about and develop skills in performance, choreography, and responding to a variety of genres from a range of historical and contemporary contexts. This course enables students to explore and use dance elements, vocabularies, processes, and technologies to express personal, group, and cultural identities, to convey and interpret artistic ideas, and to strengthen social interaction.

For those studying the International Baccalaureate programme in Years 12 and 13, IB Dance assists students in developing their potential as dancers and choreographers. Consistent with the educational philosophy of the IB, the Diploma Programme dance curriculum aims for a holistic approach to dance, and embraces a variety of dance traditions and dance cultures—past, present and looking towards the future. Performance, creativity and analytical skills are mutually developed and valued whether the students are writing papers or creating/performing dances. The curriculum provides students with a liberal arts orientation to dance. This orientation facilitates the development of students who may become choreographers, dance scholars, performers or those, more broadly, who seek life enrichment through dance.