Modern Dance Technique Skill List

Struggling with what to teach in your modern dance classes? This list of modern dance skills can help! Featuring skills to be taught at four levels: beginning, intermediate, advanced intermediate, and advanced, this list of modern dance skills will make it easier to create your modern dance lesson plans, evaluation and level-up assessments, and even a full studio or program curriculum for modern dance! 

This brand-new resource from the trusted Holistic Dance Teacher Collection includes a list of technique-based skills that can be taught in modern dance classes, in addition to general overall dance technique concepts that are applicable to any dance form. The list is divided into four skill levels; beginning, intermediate, advanced intermediate, and advanced. You can further divide the lists into smaller sections if your dance studio or program offers more than four levels of modern dance technique, or combine them if you offer less than four levels. You can use this guide to help you devise modern dance lesson plans or build a curriculum for your modern dance program.

For the purpose of this guide, modern dance refers to movement rooted in the styles of early modern dance practitioners including, but not limited to Isadora Duncan, Doris Humphrey and her protégé José Limón, Lester Horton and his protégé Alvin Ailey, Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn and their protégé Martha Graham (and, in turn, her protégés Paul Taylor and Merce Cunningham), and Katherine Dunham.

Please note that this skill list is not a complete list of all modern dance skills that could possibly be taught in modern dance classes, but it is extensive. It is not a complete syllabus or curriculum, but a tool that you can use to design your own. This modern dance technique skill list does not include descriptions or videos of the skills, advice on how to teach the skills, or drills and progressions related to the skill. 

The Holistic Dance Teacher Collection is trusted by dance industry professionals all over the world, with over 2,000 orders placed by dancers, dance teachers, choreographers, studio owners, program directors, and dance parents in all 50 US states and 49 countries since 2001.