This research takes place in southwestern Europe, in Portugal, and departs from a global/European concern that schooling needs to generate learning with real meaning and significance for students, in order to provide a meaningful educational experience and prepare them for life in society (World Bank, 2018). Education needs to go beyond preparing young people for the labour market, and should insist on skills that can proliferate active, responsible, and engaged citizens (OECD, 2018).

This paper aims to understand dance experiences young people can join in in upper-secondary school. It is part of a larger research project, funded by FCT, that seeks to explore if and how young people's experiences with dance relate to their well-being and their view of themselves as citizens.

Dance is an art form that has always been present in people's lives through festivities, celebrations or other forms of sociability (Guarato, 2015) in Europe and throughout the world. However, this more popular, communal and spontaneous dimension of dance has faded, giving rise to a more elitist approach (Alves, 2020). If on one hand public policies disregard the arts in educational debates, on the other, economically privileged families insist that their children and youngsters attend art academies because they recognize the potential of an education through art (Eça, 2010), and because the practice of a set of so-called extracurricular activities allows them to affirm and reinforce their social status (Macedo, 2009; Macedo & Araújo, 2020). There is a redefinition of the contours of dance. This is embodied by a selection of people seen as able to join in, a restrict criterion about the types of bodies (seen as) adequate and the transmission of steps to be memorized and presented in an irreproachable way, particularly in the scope of classical dance. From this elitism and restrictions associated with "who can dance" emerges the construction of a set of stereotypes. Even if several studies try to discredit the prejudiced views that dance is a target (Hanna, 2010), the connections between people's affective sexual orientation and art, namely dance, tend to be taken for granted by most people (Reed, 2011) leading to constrain an important right, the right to dance and express through it.

Educational research allows asserting that there is a hierarchy of knowledge at the level of curricula, with the arts - and dance in particular - in the last plan (EURYDICE, 2009). The prioritization of reason, of technical and technological knowledge, may neglect ethical, aesthetic and solidary dimensions in learning-teaching as it fosters competition and individualism, increasing socio-educational inequalities. In this line of concerns, a space is opened for the arts, and in particular with dance, to reflect on more human and holistic educational principles.

In Portugal, the Profile of Pupils Leaving Compulsory School (2017) seems to consider these concerns, establishing a set of principles, areas of skills and values that should be included in the education of children and young people, while recognizing the importance of a human-based education. However, when we analyze the curricular matrices for secondary education in Portugal - Decree-Law No. 55/2018 of july 6 - we see that the human, expressive, and artistic dimensions are increasingly neglected as we progress in the educational levels. In fact, the curricular pillars of the education system in Portugal aim to respond to the National Qualifications Framework (2009) which, in turn, is governed by the European Qualifications Framework (2008). In other words, a framework governed by competitive, economic and mercantilist principles that leaves small room for the exercise of a body, brain and soul citizenship.

Based on these concerns, and trying to contribute to the promotion of educational justice by means of the access to dance, this paper explores the identification of schools in Porto’s district that offer dance; to address the question: what dance experiences can young people enjoy in upper-secondary school? The objectives are to: i) Identify upper-secondary education institutions (public, private, artistic and professional), in Porto's district, that have dance spaces; ii) Understand the formats of this offer (extracurricular activity, school sports, dance clubs, among others); iii) Understand who is responsible for the initiative of creating these spaces; iv) Identify the young people who participate in these spaces, as well as, the realities that inform their lives, outlining socioeconomic and sociodemographic 'profiles', and articulating them with dimensions of well-being. The Directorate of Education Statistical Services and the School Network Team of the Institute of Education Financial Management were contacted, providing access to the GesEdu digital portal. This allowed the identification of 183 educational institutions. Through consultation of official institutional websites, public social network pages, email contact and telephone calls, the schools that had dance spaces were identified. It should be noted only 22 educational institutions did not reply. Next, questionnaire surveys will be administered to the young people who attend the dance spaces, in order to understand the realities that inform their lives. The research falls within the phenomenological-interpretative paradigm, taking a naturalistic and interpretive approach to the world. This means, it studies social phenomena in their natural settings, to understand and/or interpret realities through the meanings that people attach to them (Denzin & Lincoln, 2018). A mixed method, in the early stages presented takes an exploratory-quantitative approach that will complement the remaining qualitative stages. The ethical principles of research are taken into account throughout the journey, from the recognition of the copyright of the arguments mobilized, through the informed consents and assents systematically reinforced, to the return of the data to the research participants.

The mapping allowed to understand that only 39 upper-secondary schools in Porto’s district offer dance (about 24.2%) from the universe of 161 respondents. Most of the institutions that offer dance (about 66.7%) are in municipalities located in district's coastal area; Porto municipality being the most expressive. Regarding the nature of the offer, only 38.5% are public educational institutions. It is in private institutions that the supply is more present (about 61.5%). Some diversity is observed in what concerns the type of offer made available by the institutions. In the private educational institutions, dance is mainly present in the daily school life as an extracurricular activity or specific/professional training – about 47.8% each. In some cases, dance makes part of the school sports as an option – about 4.4%. In public educational institutions the dance offer is more diversified. The most expressive typology is school sports – about 66.7% - followed by specific/professional training and dance clubs – about 13.3% each. As a less expressive offer, dance as an extracurricular activity appears – about 6.7%. Contrary to what is foreseen in the Work Plan for Culture 2023-2026 (2022) and in the National Plan for the Arts (2019), which recognize the importance of contact with the arts and defend the widening and democratization of its access, these results allow us to conclude that the offer of dance at upper-secondary school level is restricted to a very small universe of educational institutions. This is even less expressive when we move more towards the interior of the district or refer to educational institutions of public nature. Even so, we conclude that access to dance education is not sufficiently democratized, making the right to its practice unequal. A vein to be more explored.

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