DANCE thoughts #4: Creating Dance based on Learning Styles

The Performing Arts

In Schools

In our final week of dance, Iris prompted us to think about 'why is dance important of us to teach?' The performing arts develops the whole child - the physical, the social, spiritual and aesthetic. I believe that dance is a wonderful creative outlet and a way of feeling comfortable within your body. This translates to all areas of life, as it teaches you how to think imaginatively, to take intellectual risks, and develops confidence. A dancer walking up onto a stage to make a speech is more likely to feel confident and less self-conscious that someone who is not used to using their body as a tool for self-expression.

We watched a video called 'The Painting Dance', choreographed and performed by Kellie Van Sebille. The value in this video is that it connects movement with words (a poem about painting a butterfly), "put on a smock", "big colourful butterfly", "two colours" - the story she tells is a stimulus for the dance. Using this video also provides explicit scaffolding and can be a great starting point in class. It can serve as a springboard. Iris told us that she used this video with a Year 6 class of boys, who found it very funny. However they then changed it to a hip hop style and changed elements of the poem.

We also watched an excerpt from The Stowaways by Philippe Genty. Using the questions:

• How would you describe the quality of movement of the female dancer? 
• What shapes did the dancers use? 
• How have the dancers used the space? 
• What body parts are used in the movements? 
• How did the dancers make you feel? 
• What was the dance about? 

The dance was very contemporary, with angular and controlled movements. There was an element of uneasiness about it.

Creating Dances

based on

Learning Styles

This week's workshop involved creating choreography in response to different stimuli. I thought this was a fantastic class and will definitely use it when I teach dance. The stimuli were based on 4 different learning styles and were: visual, tactile, ideation and kinaesthetic. Students got to choose which group they wanted to be in, and I think it would be great to give the children the same choice in the classroom.

Visual

• This should just be any sort of object that is visually interesting/stimulating
• In workshop, it was an African looking dark wooden box in the shape of a pregnant woman.
• Students then use this to create choreography
• Students could also use their own music to accompany the dance. I think that in the classroom, as students will not have their own ipods, it would be handy to have the IWB on and search for the music they want on youtube - they are usually hooked up to sound.

I was in the visual group and we decided to choreograph the birth process from conception through to birth itself. With an open-ended task it was a very enjoyable and imaginative process, and one which really promoted collaboration.

Tactile

• This involves the students feeling but not seeing an object
• In this case, it was a piece of sea coral
• Students then use this to create choreography

The students in my workshop were able to recognise that it was an object from the sea, and created a dance about a child's visit to the beach and a strange and frightening object appearing.

Ideation

• This is when a dance is created in response to a story.
• The picture book 'Henry and Amy' was used by Stephen Michael King
• I thought I might use the book 'The Red Tree' by Shaun Tan.

Kinaesthetic 

• This was based on the quality of the movement itself and meaning was made out of those movements and actions.

The quality of the products was really great, particularly for kinaesthetic I thought. I think the reason for this high calibre was that it was our final workshop and the groups were implementing the elements of dance we had learnt throughout the four weeks. Compared to our original choreographies in Workshop 1, I believe that they were much better. In using this lesson, I would then use it a little later down the track when students can implement the elements they've learnt in a more autonomous way in this student-directed activity.