Running from May 1 – 7, Australian Dance Week aims to raise awareness of professional dance and dance in the community, and to celebrate its diversity. Our Dance Academy movie webinar is the perfect resource to prompt engaging conversations about dance in your classroom. 

In this live event held recently at the ACTF, Dance Academy producer Joanna Werner and actress Alicia Banit spoke via video conference to excited students from West Australia, the Northern Territory and South Australia. The participating primary and secondary students asked thoughtful questions about the elements of dance, choreography, technical and expressive skills, and production elements, including:

• How beginning dancers can remain fit and healthy. 
• The hardest part about dancing and acting at the same time.
• Alicia’s favourite dance styles and moves.
• How long it takes to film a 10-second scene in the Dance Academy movie.
• How Alicia projects emotion into a dance that she doesn’t feel a connection with.

After filming the live event, we edited the hour-long video and broke it down into individual questions and answers. This treatment allows teachers and students to jump straight to the topics which interest them the most.

In addition to Dance, the webinar is a great resource for other learning areas in The Arts; Joanna and Alicia discussing many themes relevant to Drama and Media Arts. The discussion also links to Australian Curriculum content in the Literature and Literacy strands for English, including detailed conversations about: characters, settings and events; author’s purpose and audience; and the differences and similarities between texts.

The first of our two Dance Academy movie webinars, with questions from students in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia, is also available on the ACTF YouTube channel.  

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