Democratic Dance: Exploring Public Dance As A Cultivator Of Civic Virtue

Abstract

Based upon citizenship theory, that within a deliberative democracy citizens must have certain civic virtues, I explored the development of these virtues within an ensemble of dancers. Displacing ourselves from the studio space where hierarchy of dance teacher to student is a daily ritual, these explorations will occur in non-traditional spaces around TCU's campus. This project recognizes physical explorations as research and thus employs the term dance laboratory rather than rehearsal.