‘I don’t know how to explain it’: finding the language in order to act through an Activist Approach to ballet

In dance settings and particularly with ballet, historical precedence reveals settings where dancers are seen and not heard, expected to perform with assumed norms, and perceived as objects for manipulation and/or empty receptacles to fill. To respond to calls for new routes forward in dance, the Activist Approach to teaching offers one organizing theoretical lens to frame student-centered practices in movement settings and to enter conversations with students about what best facilitates or most hinders their interests, motivation, and learning. The purpose of this paper is to describe how using the Activist Approach to teaching in a dance course accompanied students in finding language to express their voices to better create dance opportunities that met their needs. This qualitative participatory action research took place in beginning level university ballet courses, with findings emerging around challenges we worked through together to 1) develop ongoing communication, 2) listen beyond the words, and 3) listen and respond with students across time. Engaging in listening and responding processes over time, the students developed depth and nuance in their language and afforded a way to integrate student voice to guide the curricular journey.