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Dance: A Means Of Personality Development

Dance: A Means of Personality Development
The word 'Dance' denotes a movement; but, more elaborately, these movements are graceful. So, the dance in simple words can be defined as graceful movements. Yet the question remains that how to decide a movement to be 'graceful'. This 'grace' is usually inborn, but it can be developed by practice. When a movement looks beautiful in the space, it can be called 'graceful'.
Firstly, the dance begins with human body. So, it is important to know that it helps to shape up human body or physique. Especially, of a proper training is given in childhood, a person can build a proper physique and plus it affects his day-to-day movements, they become more confident and graceful.
Dance helps mainstream as well as differently abled children in many ways. In dance, all your sensory systems which are important in learning process, get activated. It increases a child's concentration as in dance you have to be aware of many things like directions, music, movements, expression, co-ordination at a time. I helps to develop an ability of balance. When you dance, you forget about everything else and thus, it is a means of relaxation, at the same time you become more aware of your own body orientation. In any form of structural (classical) dance, you activate 90% of your vestibular cerebral stimulus (which is inactive otherwise) because it is minute to minute change in the postural awareness, balance and orientation of body in space. It gives you a different kind of confidence because the body conquers gravity and thus can do anything.
The training of dance helps the children in their academics. As their power of imagination and expression improves, they can express themselves capably in language. It helps them to improve or memorize the geometrical patterns because in dance they follow various geometrical patterns. They also improve in counting in mathematics. They become very presentable and free. Children are fast in grasping a movement, so, they can memorize many things through gestures or movements. Especially, if they are learning structural or classical form of dance, this can be done very precisely.
The kinesthetic memory is the foundation of your learning and dancing improves all your sensory systems. Since you have to follow the rhythm while dancing, it improves your auditory attention ability. When one dances, the right hemisphere will be very active musically and emotionally and thus, automatically it relaxes the dancer. For normal human beings, dance improves their visual concentration, heart and lung capacity, improves their imagination and controls emotions. They develop a good aesthetic sense.
For the differently abled children, you have to re-structure the dance. It works as a therapy for them. So, we can call it Therapeutic Choreography. If there is a problem in sensory integration, a child is hyperactive, has poor concentration and short attention span. He may have difficulty in left-right discrimination, poor orientation of his body in space and therefore, may have difficulty in learning in spite of normal and above average intelligence. In such cases, Therapeutic Choreography helps these children to a great extent. As dance needs dynamic balance, it improves body image. Through dance a child's (who has learning difficulty) sensory system is activated and integration of all the systems is possible. All the sensory systems, vision, touch, kinesthetic vestibular have to work in rhythm while dancing. Therefore it improves sensory integration and concentration. Hyper-activity is automatically reduced and child's performance in studies improves.
Differently abled children have poor body image, low form of the muscles, poor organization and motor planing. But, they have an extra liking for music. Therefore, dance plays an important role in improving their physical condition and learning capacity. Restructuring the dance according to the music and their capacity helps them a lot. A structural dancing gives them a sense of movement and installs in them a sense of confidence to move.
 

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