Creative and imaginative nature of children must be fostered in educational process of elementary school, especially in dance subject. Being creative and imaginative are the essence of art education as well as the foundations of children’s potentials of multiple intelligence. Unfortunately, dance learning in elementary school generally ignores such nature of children. There children usually must imitate and memorize dance movements exemplified by their teacher without any space for their imagination and creativity, let alone the lesson not suitable for the developmental stages of children. As a consequence, dance learning may blunt the children’s potentials. Accordingly, this article offers a concept of humanist dance learning in elementary school, which treats a child as a child. It means that dance learning should be based on the children’s imagination and creativity so that children are able to make a concept of dance, translate the concept into the form of dance, and perform the dance according to their developmental stage. Thus, this article employs phenomenology approach as a means of analysis and construction.
Key words: humanism, creative, imaginative.