…six, seven, eight… every LAWYER can dance! Drawing on Dance to Teach Law
Transformative, creative pedagogies are urgently needed in legal education. Far from the cutting-edge of pedagogical practice, legal education is heavily shaped by conservative notions of ‘professionalism’. This, in turn, has often constrained the pedagogical imagination of staff who teach in the field. Where cutting-edge practices are present, they are rarely captured in literature on legal education. Increasingly, scholars and practitioners are pushing for changes in legal education that could enable students to learn differently, creating forms of ‘professionalism’ that demonstrate a deep commitment to social justice and inclusivity. In this blog series, Who said that learning law is boring? Bringing Creative Teaching Methods into Legal Education, we explore how arts-based, affective and embodied teaching methods can deepen students’ learning of law and enrich socio-legal teaching. These blogs start from the premise that everyone is creative, and that taking creative approaches to legal education can build critical analytical, vocation, and civic skills.
Maria Federica Moscati, University of Sussex: m.f.moscati@sussex.ac.uk
Key words: dance; law; teaching; well-being
INTRODUCTION
“…six, seven, eight, everyone can dance” … is the motto of Dance in Law, Politics and Sociology (Dance in LPS), a teaching initiative I launched at the University of Sussex in 2024. Reference to dance has been always part of my teaching in law, but I created Dance in LPS to offer my students a safe, empowering and creative space where they could address anxiety and lack of self-confidence while learning from their own body and then use such knowledge to enhance their law studies. Awareness of other bodies in space is a skill that dancers learn, and bringing dance into legal pedagogy teaches active listening and reminds students that law is about bodies – human bodies – that move, live and feel in time and space. My students are the force and the inspiration that moved me to bring dance into my teaching; I wish to thank all of them, while bringing their dancing voices into this blog.[1]
Drawing on Dance to Teach Law
There is a growing body of research exploring dance, movement and embodied approaches to law. Dance and movement have also been used as methods of socio-legal research and teaching. For example, recent research on human rights education has examined how movement and gesture can make legal concepts more accessible, and the importance of bringing dance into legal education has been raised with regards to dispute resolution too. Similarly, the positive effects of dance on physical and mental health are well-known, and so is the impact on broader social skills that are developed through dance.
I believe that education is a shared effort aiming at transforming (for the good) students, teachers and society. In this shared effort teachers and students learn from each other, thinking critically beyond what is immediate and convenient, and paying attention to emotions, spontaneity and creativity. To achieve this, dance is a recurrent theme in my teaching. I do that to show students that learning law can be a joyful experience, and to enhance their well-being.
In my classes, I use dance as ‘metaphor and as methodology’; I show photographs and videos of dance performances and link those to legal topics; or biographies of dancers and choreographers, like for example Rudolf Nureyev, Alvin Ailey, Les Ballets Trockadero de Montecarlo, Annabelle Lopez Ochoa who have used dance to celebrate diversity and equality. To explain the difference between black letter law and critical legal approaches, and to instill the importance of having knowledge of the legal texts and principles to then being able to comment them critically and creatively, I demonstrate a battement jeté or a rond de jambe…the standing leg is solid and grounded while allowing the working leg to move freely! Or I draw on pas de deux structure to discuss negotiation strategies, and I deliver a full class on Embodied Dispute Resolution during which students learn about dance in dispute resolution and then participate in dance exercises to embody and convey their knowledge in an authentic way. The iconic ballerina Natalia Osipova puts it beautifully:
“Advice for young dancers? [She laughs.] In school, listen to the teacher. In the theater, listen to yourself. There’s nobody but you, finally. Listen to your heart. It will tell you what’s interesting for the audience.”
The structure and delivery of my law classes are also informed by dance, and I try to refer to different styles and genres and then link to legal issues/themes/discussion. For example, I often use Agrippina Y. Vaganova’s ballet technique and pedagogy to introduce students gradually to codified topics, from the simpler to the more difficult, aiming at strengthening their knowledge and then using that knowledge creatively. Or I might draw on Martha Graham’s technique of ‘contraction and release’ and dancing production, to encourage students to convey their emotions and inspirations from other disciplines into their writing creatively. And I build upon Maurice Bejart’s work and in particular his ground-breaking Ballet for Life to educate students in the beauty of working together for social justice.
All this dance helps me to bring to the class the importance of cultivating individuality, self-confidence and resilience and of expressing emotions in a safe space while remaining committed to academic rigour and respect for differences. Ultimately, in the era of AI and inflated social media profiles, I hope to convey to my students that we should nurture our intellectual and emotional elegance and protect our authenticity, including the transformative power of making mistakes. Dance can help with that. As a past ballet teacher of mine used to say, ‘only those who don’t dance don’t fall.’
Dancing in Law, Politics and Sociology
The reason why I started Dance in Law, Politics and Sociology (Dance in LPS) was not strictly pedagogical, though. One afternoon, three students came to me, each saying the same thing: “I’m not good enough. I think I should just give up.” I couldn’t stand the sight of their incredible energy and potential being crushed under the weight of exams, deadlines, and self-doubt.
As I reflected on how to help them, I went back to the memories of when I was growing up and realized that the person I am today, and my own resilience, comes from studying ballet. I learned to be in “first position” at the barre earlier than I learned to write; ballet taught me that falling is part of life, but you can learn how to get up again with confidence, elegance, presence and joy!
So, I thought, what could be better than dance classes for law students as a way of helping them with their studies? And what better environment than the University of Sussex, where creativity, arts, thinking (and moving) out of the box have been always embedded in teaching and research (see next blogs in this series)? And just as every dance show needs collaborations to be on stage, my idea became real only because of the support of my colleagues and students.
Dance in LPS was open to all students in the School of Law, Politics and Sociology, but as the word spread, students from other schools began attending some of the classes too. The students were involved from the beginning in co-creating the syllabus and delivering the dance classes; they were dancers, teachers and choreographers. We used to meet once a week for two hours, combining dance-practice sessions and conversations on embodiment, the body, and how different styles of dancing have addressed important social justice and human rights issues. The sessions drew upon a variety of dance styles, ranging from ballet to jazz to Indian classical dance, and the discussions which followed were informed by feminist, race and queer theories. For example, the student who delivered the class on Indian dance followed it with a discussion on gender in India.
Given the background of the students and the different dance genres we danced together, Dance in LPS became comparative and interdisciplinary too; it must be said, however, that the preferred style that students regularly asked to repeat was ballet! At the same time, Dance in LPS was a means by which to connect staff and students, as colleagues delivered dance classes too; for example, the elegant Bal Sokhi-Bulley delivered a Bhangra class followed by a conversation on resistance.
Now you may wonder whether Dance in LPS helped students. Well, overall, they suggested that the dance classes helped them to build up self-confidence, but also to transfer the other dance skills, like presence and working creatively within a structure, into their learning. As one of the students put it:
“‘I discovered that two things I really loved, dance and the law, which I originally thought were completely separate, were actually very much connected. Being able to come together with fellow students and to learn about how dance intersects with law, politics and sociology, and be able to teach each other, has been an eye-opening experience, where I have been able to learn more about different cultures and styles of dance in a comfortable environment that encourages confidence and innovative discussion.”
Transforming the legal environment
Unfortunately, Dance in LPS was affected by funding cuts and after the first time it ran, we couldn’t rent the dance studio anymore. However, just like dancers on stage, who are trained to address the unexpected, we transformed what looked like a limitation into a learning resource for students: so, we moved our dance classes in the Law Moot Room! This was for us the opportunity to consider the relationship between the legal environment and the dance; to what extent would being in a legal environment change the dance of the students? And in what ways would the dance change the Moot Room? Would being in the Moot Room intimidate the students? Well, the answer to the last question is no! Being in the Moot Room was, as one student suggested, like ‘‘breathing in and processing the legal atmosphere through dance.”
We addressed those questions, and the students said that when they arrived in the Moot Room for the first session, some of them felt some “awkwardness and trepidation. As a law student in the space usually it is my quiet, sedentary attention that is required”. However, as soon as the chairs and the furniture were moved, the music started and the dance class began, they felt at ease. As one of them pointed out:
“It's not that we somehow 'forgot' we were in the court room setting, but we were at ease inhabiting the space in a more physical, dynamic and expressive way than usual, and that was inspiring! In a legal and academic context, I think we sometimes fool ourselves that we are disembodied thinkers, whereas with dance there is always connection with the physical space - the floor, the air, lighting, props, furniture - and a conversation takes place which is different every time.”
The Dance Continues
Dance became the medium through which to foster connections within and outside Sussex. For example, to nurture belonging among students and staff, and to enhance research culture through interdisciplinary collaboration across the Faculty of Social Sciences, we ran a series of workshops, Dancing Belongings (DanBel), in 2025, combining dance practice sessions with research conversations. At the same time, DanBel offered the opportunity to strengthen knowledge exchange with external dance teachers like Julie Alltree, and the charity icandance. These two collaborations were particularly important in ensuring that our dance would support EDI and CEI aims by tailoring activities for all bodies and abilities according to the expertise and choice of participants.
Dance has also been a tool for conveying themes like human reproduction through the body. With my sparkling colleague Maya Unnithan at the Centre for Cultures of Reproduction, Technologies, and Health we organised the workshop Dancing Surrogacy during which we re-imagined surrogacy through embodied experience of ballet and Rajasthani folk dance.
…and this is just the first Act of the Dance Show!
Conclusion
To conclude this blog, I invite you to dance the proud statement that some of the students (those in the picture) and I wrote to celebrate our empowering dance together:
“We are a diverse group of women, students and teachers.
We dance to learn about law, politics and sociology.
We dance to empower, include, and unite. We dance to navigate social justice.
We dance to learn. We dance to respect and celebrate all bodies.
We dance to smile, to cry, to feel.
We dance to resist.
We invite you to dance with us...six, seven, eight...Everyone can dance...!”
[1] Students consented to the use of all quotes, the poem and the picture.
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