
STATE EDUCATION SPECIALIST IN DANCE
Perpich Center’s Dance Education Specialist serves Minnesota dance educators through standards implementation, curriculum development, instruction, and assessment in K-12 schools. The Dance Specialist also supports physical education and general education teachers with implementing movement into their classrooms.
Mary Harding is Minnesota’s Dance Education Specialist. Through workshops, demonstration schools, and other professional development opportunities, Perpich Center’s Dance Education Specialist presents regularly on the value of arts education and the power of dance. Customized workshops and meetings can be created to cater to a school’s needs, and private consultations can be done virtually, in person, or on location at a school. Harding actively engages in the following topics:
- Equity, access, and inclusion
- Standards-based grading
- Culturally responsive and culturally sustaining teaching
- Student choice and voice
- Program development
- Dance education and community connections
- Assessment in the dance and physical education classroom
mary harding, dance education specialist
mary.harding@pcae.k12.mn.us | 763-279-4281
Harding is both the Dance Education Specialist and the Arts High School Dance Instructor at Perpich. In her dance career she has performed professionally with ballet, jazz, and modern companies. While a member of the Zenon Dance Company, Harding taught master classes and dance residencies in schools across the nation.
In 2002, The National Dance Association and Sportime named her the National Dance Teacher of the Year. In the same year, Mary received the SURDNA Arts Teachers Fellowship.
Mary received her master’s degree in curriculum and instruction from the College of St. Catherine. Her research, “Peer Coaching in the Arts Classroom,” received the Sister Ann Harvey Action Research Award in 2008 and was published in the June 2009 edition of Journal of Dance Education. Harding was on the National Core Arts Standards Writing Team in 2012. In 2020, Mary was appointed to the National Dance Education Organization’s Board of Directors.
2025 MINNESOTA DANCE SUMMIT
DATE AND TIME:
February 1, 2025
8:30 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Click here for more information and to register
Let’s gather this spring! Let’s dance together and inspire each other with presence, breath and artistry! Let’s deepen our self-awareness as both movers and teachers as we navigate teaching dance in this time.
Affirm, Discover, and Connect
dance Education Resources for Teachers and Administrators
Standards & Benchmarks
- 2018 Minnesota Academic Standards in Dance – By Grade Level
- Dance Glossary Companion to 2018 Art Standards
- 2018 MN K-12 Standards in Physical Education
- Recommended Minnesota Arts Education Standards Transition Timeline, 2019-2022
- MDE Current Arts Education Requirements: Standards, Credits and Courses
- National Core Arts Standards
Tools
- Exquisite Corps Lesson Plan
- Juba 4th and 5th Grade Lesson
- Rosas Dance Company Belgium
- American Masters – Dance
- Arts Assessment for Learning
- Teaching Dance in Fall 2020
- Perpich Library: Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Professional Collection
- Perpich Library: Children’s Arts and Diversity Picks
- Dance Counts

Why dance education matters?
Perpich Center believes in art education for all. We are here as a resource to ensure all children can participate in and benefit from the arts.
- Higher Student GPAs
- Kinesthetic Learning Leads to Greater Student Achievement
- Student Persistence and Sustained Attention
- Increased Critical Thinking – Deeper Comprehension of New Information
- Activates Multiple Brain Systems – Deeper Emotional Learning
Source:
“Evidence Report on Impact of Dance”, Jane Bonbright, Karen Bradley and Shannon Dooling, National Dance Education Organization
dance EDUCATION SPECIALIST WORKSHOPS
Workshop Examples
- Culturally Relevant and Sustaining Pedagogy – Who Is Known?, Shifting the Power in the Dance Composition Classroom, Memory Quilt, Peer Coaching in the Dance Classroom
- Literacy – Using Children’s Books as Dance Inspiration, Artist Journal, Using the Body, Voice, and Movement to Unlock Texts
- Interdisciplinary – Gravestone of Wheat, Self portraits, Cephalapod Dances, Dance and Architecture – Bringing Your Building Alive through Site-Specific Work
- Physical Education – Vintage Jazz, Create A Dance, Using Sports Imagery to Create a Dance, and general consultation/facilitation on Dance
- Standards and Assessment – The New 2018 Standards
- Minnesota Dance Summit
- Summer Workshop
- Dance/Talk
- Creating Community – If You Knew Me
- Dance Demonstration Schools
- and more!