Dance 3: Literacy meets movement with Henry & Amy

In today’s workshop we explored the use of stimuli for dance. We read Henry & Amy, a picture book by Stephen Michael King, which explores the themes of friendship, sameness and difference, conformity and individuality and is suitable for Early Stage 1 through to Stage 2 depending on the context of use.  A single page spread may be used as the visual stimulus, a selection of words used (in this case an ‘opposites’ word bank), a character study or the general themes presented.

We began with a locomotor warm-up, playing the follow-the-leader game using words from the opposites word bank, such as topsy-turvy, straight, wiggly, backwards, forwards. This progressed into a sequence of lines moving down the floor, moving from specific and concrete words into more abstract ideas such as sunny, rainy, right, wrong, same and different. I tried to incorporate the elements of dance in my movements, such as levels, relationships and structure, adding pauses, ducking low and using facial expressions to convey the emotion of the more abstract words. The stimuli in this exercise were visual, auditory and ideational, performed in time to music, and all in relation to the picture book.

As a kinaesthetic warm-up activity we performed a movement embodying the character of Henry or Amy, which was passed down a line like Chinese whispers. Although this was quite funny, it was interesting to observe how different people’s interpretations of movements are embellished and change the shapes and energies conveyed in a movement. This could also be extended with adding a movement on to each cumulatively, building the student’s capacity for remembering choreographed sequences.

The focus activity involved choosing to work in a group of Amy’s, Henry’s or their relationship, and creating a sequence without music that reflected the characters or the themes. We told a story entitled “breaking free”, which carried the intention of showing how people may be trapped in a conformist, balanced life, but after they take a risk and express themselves, others may follow. We played with levels, canon, travel and shape to provide variety. Though this was achieved without music, extending the activity to include music selection or composition would add another layer.

Before this lesson I was hesitant to know how to introduce dance into a lesson, but I can see how characters, feelings and concepts can be kinaesthetically explored through dance to improve outcomes in other KLAs, particularly literacy. This ties in with Gibson and Ewing's (2011) premise that the arts is a kind of "aesthetic literacy" (p. 8).

References

Gibson, R. & Ewing, R. (2011). Transforming the curriculum through the arts. Camberwell: Palgrave Macmillon.