Dance 4: Moving to a stimulus

Today’s workshop gave us the choice to experiment with all the different elements of dance, using a stimulus. As always we started with a locomotor warmup, which had a more cardiovascular orientation, due to the more physically challenging nature of the choreography in today’s task. We traveled around the space to music and moved into the corners of the room, to carry out burpees, star jumps, triceptives and crunches. This reminded me of the dynamic stretches you would start a PDHPE lesson with.

We were then introduced to the choreography sequence, which was more organic movement than previous sequences. It linked with last lesson around the picture book Henry and Amy, by Stephen Michael King, asking us to characterise a movement as being akin to either Amy (controlled, restricted movement) or Henry (free, wild movement). The sequence used levels, canon, isolated body parts and contrast.

This followed on to the main task, which would normally comprise a term of work with background research and cross-KLA integration. We formed groups based on our interest in a range of stimuli presented:

- Tactile (feeling an object in a bag). The range of possibilities here are endless!

- Visual (a tribal statue of a woman with her head in her hands)

- Kinaesthetic (creating a narrative to go with the choreography sequence)

- Ideational (creating a 30 second advertisement for a product, with criteria of vocals, slogan, a focus on a particular body part, an element of contrast, etc….

I worked in a pair on the visual stimulus. We had to brainstorm ideas, develop a concept, create movement to show intent. We had to consider using space, time, dynamics, relationships and structure.

What do you see, hear or touch?  How do you move?  What do you feel or think?

our visual stimulus

We brainstormed ideas based on the functional way the object opened up, the cultural context of a naked tribal woman (the aesthetics of material and shape) and the vulnerable emotion conveyed in her body language. 

Our piece had the intent of showing her moving from a stressed state of vulnerability, pausing for self-reflection, seeing herself (in a mirror image), and eventually breaking free. We used mirroring techniques, isolating body parts by focusing attention on our fingers running along the floor, contrast in the way we broke from mirrored actions, and changing levels from low to high. The musical accompaniment we chose was perfectly suited (Salt, from a Bangarra Dance Theatre performance called Terrain, composed by David Page).

The sorts of movements we used were also partly inspired by Bangarra Dance choreography, as can be seen below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtgMt_7el44

After ten minutes, we performed our pieces, after stating our title and intent. I think the piece really connected with the audience due to the relationship we conveyed and the slow, occasionally contrasting movement. It was satisfying receiving feedback from peers who said the piece really touched them!

The difficulty of this task was not having parameters to guide our thinking. In comparison to other tasks, the visual stimulus was more open to interpretation. I would start students with stronger scaffolding before moving into tasks that are more open for interpretation.

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.

Dance 2: Letting our hair down

We consolidated some of the elements of dance from the previous workshop, and learnt more complex ones, culminating in a filmed choreographed piece to “hairspray” the Musical. The warm-up consisted of traveling around the space at different speeds, forms, shapes and levels, independently and in groups, such as “hop around…. Make a tree with 5” and with an appropriated PE tag game. We then played follow-the –leader, using sustained, lyrical, percussive movements.

We eased into some choreographed walks, staying in line as we walked toward a point, including a jazz run, a walk and turn. This became more complex and specific, breaking down and teaching sections of choreography. In putting the choreography together in our “hairspray” piece, I could see how effective the choreography became once we used levels, ducking and rising; and canon, freezing as certain characters took the stage. This would create more variety and be more engaging for audiences, than a synchronised, whole-class dance. After a practice run we were filmed, making a link with digital media. The task also required elements of drama like characterisation with body language and facial expression, and could cross KLAs into English to reflect written and film texts. 

Dance 1: An introduction to the elements of dance

As a warm up, we traveled around the room to music in random patterns: straight lines with sharp corners, curved pathways, backwards and leading with different body parts. To get the heart rate up we also did a dynamic isolated body part warm up to music. As a lead-in to dance and to get our performance confidence up, we divided into groups. To music, each row walks in unison toward mirror with a walk, then with a basic walk and turn, then with a choreographed step sequence. This was easy to see individual’s sense of timing, coordination, unison etc… without feeling like you were performing.

The next activity was moving around the space based on given parameters, like move with “two feet”, “one foot two hands”, “no hands or feet”, “make letters of the alphabet”. This served as a brainstorming method, as we then formed groups and devised and performed a piece to music using these parameters. We used our bodies to spell out the letters of our names, which we then performed to a partner and then to the class. I was surprised how the letter formations constitute such unusual dance movements, without even thinking of it as choreography!

In all of the activities, we almost implicitly considered the elements of dance like levels, space, travel, timing and so on. The structure of activities (working in groups) eliminated the feeling of self-consciousness and reserve we would usually feel in a performance space.