Express Dance

Educators’ Resource for Teaching Dance – Grades 4 to 12

By Carol Oriold, Allen Kaeja, Karen Kaeja
The Express Dance method is designed for high school levels and offers a safe, creative and physically invigorating program of movement classes. Teachers with no background in dance can use the Express Dance Method and feel confident in meeting curriculum requirements and expectations. Allen and Karen Kaeja developed this method through their teaching experience in high schools firmly believing that, “Dance is human gesture and gesture has been the principal mode of communication among human beings since the beginning of time. Express Dance in not an attempt to provide dance training, but to help students understand their physical potential and how that potential can be used as a means of self-expression.”

About the Authors
Carol Oriold began teaching drama in the 1970s. She is the author of plays and the facilitator of numerous social-issues dramas, collectively written with students, that have been produced in high schools across Canada. Superwomen, a musical Oriold co-wrote with Arlene Ostien, was professionally produced by Huron Country Playhouse. She has also served as the president of the Board of Directors for the Blyth Festival.

Karen Kaeja has choreographed over thirty original works, both self-initiated and commissioned. She performs and choreographs internationally and has been featured in several award-winning dance films. She is co-artistic director/founder of Kaeja d’Dance and of Toronto’s Festival of Interactive Physics.

Allen Kaeja is the recipient of numerous national and international choreographic and film directing awards and his works have been presented in fifteen countries. He is also co-artisitic director/founder of Kaeja d’Dance, the CanAsian dance festival and, during the 1990s, co-managed fFIDA (fringe Festival of Independent Dance Artists).