In the words of others, pondering the paradox that is applied linguistics…

Dance and philosophy
I would not know what the spirit of a philosopher might wish more to be than a good dancer.
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, section 381
Dance and language
Dance is the hidden language of the soul.
Martha Graham
Our bodies speak a language of their own.
Ibrahim Farrah
Dance and poetry
The dance is a poem of which each movement is a word.
Mata Hari
Dance and the universe
Everything in the universe has rhythm. Everything dances.
Maya Angelou
Dance and music
Those who dance are considered insane by those who can't hear the music.
George Carlin
Dance is the music made visible.
Morocco
Dance and teaching
To dance is to share- to share is to teach.
Selayma

I have taken dance as an example and shown through the reflections of others how it connects to different aspects of the arts as well as to teaching. Susan Griss wrote a fascinating book called Minds in Motion, A kinestetic Approach to Teaching Elementary Curriculum. She talks about how dance can be used to enhance the teaching of many different subject matters- from language arts to science to math. Here is what she has to say of the benefits of using dance in the classroom:

"As in the creation of any art form, choreography- making formal and aesthetic decisions to create a dance that can be repeated- calls upon and develops a multitude of skills.
The creative process of choreography leads children to develop the germ of an idea through many stages of brainstorming and exploration, analysis and synthesis, refinement and editing. Discipline, persistence, and the ability to be organized and to take risks are general requirements for success."

In her article Communicative Language Teaching for the Twenty-First Century, Savignon discusses how Communicative Language Teaching has included such activities as play and theatre in the quest for language competencies: sociocultural, strategic, discourse, and grammatical. She asserts that "learner attitude is without a doubt the single most important factor in learner success."

This idea of using various interactive means to learn is certainly not new. When Friederich Schiller wrote about education in 1795 he had this to say about it:

"Play, I must insist, is never trivial. The balance of freedom and rule, of joy and restraint as evident in games and sport is all one with the agility and speed of intellect in its highest reaches; for as intellect meets with perception, necessity puts aside its seriousness, because it grows light. A joy of discovery, of surprise, enlivens our most somber inquiries. Man must needs keep before him his games as reminders; for if he is serious with the agreeable, the comprehensible, and the good, with Beauty he plays. Which is to say, he resolves a tension and achieves a state of equipoise, a subtle ballance between tension and release, in effect, a disipline of expression of a kind familiar to performing artists- an artistry of living and of inquiry. That is aesthetic education."