ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights the empowering and transformative nature of dance in young children's lives. When teachers are engaged in critical reflection about their own lives, it influences what they do in their engagement with young children. Currere breathes life back into traditional views of curriculum, by considering curriculum as living and lived experience with/in which learners-teachers are embodied. New Zealand's early childhood curriculum, Te Wha-riki, provides the setting for agentic acts of transformation that encompass the spiritual, historical, sociocultural and political dimensions of being human. The curriculum is underpinned by the principles of holistic development, empowerment, family and community and relationships. The teacher's recognition of the children's discovery of their own dance and the awesomeness this experience offered enabled the teacher to enter the unknown as a place of wonderment and new learning. Ultimately, the teacher recognised the emergence of democracy as applied pedagogical practice.
