Our Philosophy:

At Shammah Dance and Art Academy performing arts is the central focus of our school.  Our philosophy is to educate our students not just on dance technique, form, and skill all of which they will learn and grow in but to build a strong spiritual foundation as well.

We use a well developed curriculum that helps us to teach the importance of knowing that dance is movement, visually organized in space and time. The way a dance shapes movement defines the critical attributes of its style, genre, and place in the history of dance.   A dancer’s skills and techniques are often based on tradition and passed down from one generation to the next.  Nonetheless, dance is in a constant state of selfdefinition.  Especially, liturgical dance becasue it has yet to become fully defined and yet that is the bueaty of Liturgical dance because it can not be put within a box of specific movement.

Part of teaching is based on the fact that dancers, choreographers, and all those involved in studying and performing dance take part in defining and reinterpreting the art form.

Our program is designed to help students......

* Gain significant knowledge of dance elements, principles, and concept

* Develop and apply an understanding of basic principles of liturgical dance choreography

* Apply knowledge, skills, and techniques of liturgical dance in formal dance
presentations/ministry

* Build personal criteria for the evaluation of non-professional and professional

dance performance and study

* Effectively communicate ideas, thoughts, and feelings through liturgical dance.

Our program supports the achievement of all students, despite individual differences in learning rates and/or prior knowledge, skills and beliefs.

Over the course of our dance program, students will:

* Develop meaningful concepts of self, human relationships, and physical environments

* Build critical thinking skills by examining the reasons for dancers’ actions, by analyzing individual responses to lessons and performances, and by interpreting the intent of choreographers

* Strengthen and refine creative thinking skills by creating original interpretations of dances, based on response to others’ work, and by constructing scenery, props, lighting, and makeup for special productions and outside ministry.

* Learn to contextualize liturgical dance in culture and history by exploring how a dance relates to scripture and it's place within churches and ministries.

* Learn the communication methods of different media by carefully examining live and recorded dance performances.

This is only a brief over view of what every students learns here at Shammah Dace and Arts Academy and I hope you can tell we take pride in the curriculum that we offer becuase we love what we do!

An education in the arts encourages high achievement

• Study of the arts encourages a suppleness of the mind, a toleration for ambiguity, a taste for nuance, and the ability to make trade-offs among alternative courses of action.

• Study of the arts helps students to think and work across traditional disciplines. They learn both to integrate knowledge and to "think outside the box."

• An education in the arts teaches student how to work together cooperatively.

• An education in the arts builds an understanding of diversity and the multi-cultural dimensions of our world.

• An arts education insists on the value of content, which helps students understand "quality" as a key value.

• An arts education contributes to technological competence.