The Significance Of "Educational Dance" Theory To Preschool Dance Education

Preschool period is both critical and special for the physical and mental development of one’s whole life. As an integral part of liberal arts education, preschool dance is regarded as an effective way to promote children’s physical and mental development, cultivate their individuality, improve their personality and enhance their creativity. While preschool dance education has developed into a great fever in recent years in mainland China, we’ve met with many problems, such as paying little attention to cultivating creativity, lacking of its educational target or function, owing to the fact that we haven’t done enough researches in the laws and charactes of children’s physical and mental development, thus failing to provide a systematic educational theory or method to solve these problems.Rudolph von Laban, a Hungarian dance professional known as the "Father of Modern Dance Theory," proposed a theory of "Educational Dance" in as early as 1940s, which happens to meet the needs of raising the level of liberal arts education in China in recent years. The Educational Dance takes the "Creative Dance" as a tool, focuses on cultivating children’s creativity and aims at developing their comprehensive qualities, thus setting up a good example for our Chinese preschool dance teachers to follow. However, both theoretical study and practical application of this "Educational Dance" theory are merely beginning, and that is the strong theoretical value and practical significance of this M.A. dissertation.