decorating the dance room

Happy Solstice and happy new year (and whatever else you celebrate)!

My gift to myself has been to gradually decorate the dance room — for decades I have been collecting photos, mostly cut out of magazines, waiting for the chance to use them to adorn a dance studio. Many had been on the walls at EOSA, but came down when that program dissolved... Now I finally have walls to decorate again!

It is a bit of a laborious process — since the buildings are brand-new, we are not allowed to use tape, staples, nails, or anything else except blue painters' tape, so I have to cut out multiple little circles of painters' tape for the back of each picture. I have been using Tuesday afternoons, when the break-dance club is meeting in the room, to decorate. It's going slowly, and I've made just a dent in that blank-walls feeling, but it is a start...

Last week I finished the "dance ancestors" wall (the most important, of course!). My selection is skewed toward the photos that have appeared in my dance magazines over the years, so I'm a bit chagrined, as a longtime Hawkins dancer and a recent devotee of Duncan dance, that I have so relatively few pictures of Isadora Duncan and Erick Hawkins (I had to find a picture of Erick online, as the only ones in my collection were of Erick and Martha together) — not to mention only one small photo of Alvin Ailey. But it is good to have a representative sample of some of our ancestors, at any rate.

I also made a good start on a world dance wall, although it can certainly grow (I may need to do more searching for images, as the photos from dance magazines heavily favor ballet and modern dance)...

And, when we were working on the symmetrical and asymmetrical shapes project, I made it a priority to get my "shapes" posters up on the wall, along with an elements of dance poster...

I have so many more photos and so many more walls to decorate — but it feels good to have this much done!

pre-winter break creative work

This past week we worked on a few different (though related) concepts. We started out on Monday with the map activity — a tried-and-true lesson I learned at a workshop many years ago and have been using successfully ever since. This time we began the same as usual — draw a beginning and ending point; connect them with a pathway including straight lines, curved lines, and a zig zag; try various locomotor movements on your pathway — but when we came to adding the stopping places for still shapes and axial movements, I introduced the LOD (Language of Dance) symbols for turn, spring, and still shape. It worked well, and we had just enough time to show the resulting solos in three groups each class.

On Tuesday, we focused more on the LOD notation. I started them off with a freeze dance emphasizing traveling, turning, and a lot of variations on opening / closing, expanding / contracting, folding in / reaching out, etc. to give them a handle on what is meant by extension and flexion. I then explained to them about various forms of notation and LOD in particular, gave them the symbols for traveling, flexion, and extension to add to the three we had learned the day before (I had all 6 symbols taped to the mirror), and showed on the whiteboard how to arrange the symbols into a timeline. On backs of the maps from the day before (to save paper), students created a timeline using at least one of each of the six symbols, then took a few minutes to turn their notation into movement. They showed their solos to one partner, who followed along with the notation, and then discussed what they noticed.

Wednesday and Thursday, because of exit exam diagnostic testing (always with the testing!), we were missing all of the sophomores — about half the population of all of my dance classes — so I wanted to do a two-day project just for the juniors and seniors (and the few freshmen I have this year). I wanted to try something that we might get to next year in higher-level classes (which the seniors would miss out on), and I also wanted to do something with pairs; so I looked through my notes and found an accumulate-a-duet lesson, which I was able to adapt for my beginners... Here's how it went:

On Wednesday, we warmed up with a brief freeze dance, again using reaching, folding, turning, traveling, jumping, and still shapes. We then began a sequence of seven elements — we tried each element in multiple ways before adding it to the sequence, repeating the entire sequence with each addition. The seven elements were:
1. make a fabulous shape
2. look somewhere in the room and travel to it
3. reach out, then fold in
4. do a signature movement (your favorite move, the one you would do forever if you could only do one!)
5. a turn
6. a spring or jump (any air movement)
7. a variation of your fabulous shape
After practicing the sequence until it was settled, we then did some editing: remove any two of your seven elements, but keep the other five in the same order ("when you write an essay, you do a rough draft first then edit out all the fluff — dances need to be edited, too!"). This being  a short Wednesday, we didn't have much time for showing — the homework was to remember the edited five-element phrase for the next day.

On Thursday, we started with a very brief recap, for students to remember their phrases (and for any who were absent to catch up). Then they got into pairs, and the assignment was to combine their two five-element phrases  into one duet phrase no longer than the originals (or not much longer — I did give them the leeway to have from five to seven elements). I asked them to practice their phrases until they were really "in their bodies," because we would be fooling around with them further. We showed the duets two or three at a time, then I asked the pairs to separate (go across the room from your partner so you're not tempted to worry about shat s/he's doing").

With the partners on their own, I gave them a few choreographic devices to manipulate the phrases: size ("do it tiny... do it humongous"); tempo ("do it as fast as you can safely... start slow-motion and speed up to hyperspeed"); level ("as best you can, do it sitting down... on your tiptoes or jumping"); with different energies ("do it as if you've gone to the moon and you only weigh 20 pounds... now as if you weigh 600 pounds"); retrograde ("do it in reverse order"); and embellishment ("do it with fancy arms..."). I gave them a couple of minutes to revise their phrase using the devices they had just tried, then they showed them to their partners and discussed what surprised them in their different choices.

In general, the students did pretty well with all of the lessons. My fifth-period class in particular did some beautifully uninhibited work on Wednesday (when there were just the few juniors and seniors in class) — when we tried on a few fabulous shapes, many of them did low-level shapes without being asked (something I don't see much with beginning classes), and then continued the pattern with the traveling, crawling, rolling and spiderwalking across the floor. All in all, it felt good to be able to get a few days of creative work into them before winter break, and I hope we will be able to continue some of these concepts as we go along.

End-of-semester dilemma

Planning the end of this semester turned out to be a bit of a dilemma for me. Coming from Oakland, I was used to having two weeks after winter break before finals — ample time for a few improv lessons and a final choreography project. Most of my years at EOSA, my fall semester final was a dance mapping and notation project: after leading in with the map activity then practice describing steps and movements, groups would notate their own choreography using dance vocabulary, musical beats, and pattern maps.

After attending a wonderful workshop on the Language of Dance (LOD) this fall, I got excited about trying the project in a whole new way. In the workshop, we learned a few basic LOD symbols (shape, travel, turn, spring, flexion, extension, stillness) and how to use them in a timeline; we then created solos by arranging the symbols as a starting point. It was an engaging new way of working for me, so I planned to try turning that notation part of my usual assignment upside-down — instead of first choreographing steps and then notating them with descriptions, my students would arrange the LOD symbols to build their dances, and only then fill out the movement physically. I was anxious to try out the project in a whole new way...

Unfortunately, my new district starts and finishes the school year (and fall semester) one week earlier, leaving only one week after winter break to prepare for finals. It just felt too weird to me to have a two-week vacation in the middle of a creative work / choreography project; to top it off, I would also be missing all of my sophomores (about half the students in all my dance classes) for testing during two days of this week, making it even harder to feel that we had time to do a notation and mapping project justice. So I somewhat reluctantly decided to switch gears entirely and have a performance final instead, letting students choose one or two of the dance styles we have studied this semester (basic jazz, the Thriller jazz dance, and Lindy hop / Big Apple) to perform in class — which they could easily review in the one week after break. In the meantime, we could still work on some of the mapping and LOD concepts this week.

What feels uncomfortable for me in this is that I’ve only gotten my classes through two choreography projects this semester. There are a number of reasons for that — for one, we started the school year two weeks late, then took an extra two weeks out of the curriculum to work on the Thriller dance (which was entirely worth it, both for making the program visible and for student buy-in); we also took longer on both creative work units than I have in the past, for the sake of allowing enough time to not rush the choreography — but in that “technique vs. creative work” dichotomy, the creative work seemed to be falling behind.

On the other hand, what came out of the dilemma was perhaps a new way of thinking about teaching creative dance and improvisation for me. In the past, the bulk of my creative dance lessons have been connected to a few elements, as lead-ins to group choreography projects; but this week, we were able to do four days of creative work for its own sake, not tied to a project, and that actually felt very freeing. We did dance mapping and a brief introduction to the LOD symbols and timeline (which I hope to return to in small ways throughout the year), as well as a two-day duets project for the small classes while the sophomores were out testing (more about all those lessons in the next post). I now think that this is a direction that I can and should explore further — while I surely will continue to  teach creative work units, with specific lessons leading into choreography projects, I am intrigued by the possibility of introducing more elements and more creative dance work into the “in-between” times. Perhaps this will turn out to be a new way of finding opportunities to infuse creative work into the curriculum!

learning about cultural appropriation

We're currently in our historical social dances unit, and today I showed the segment from the old (and ever-useful) PBS series "Dancing" on the Lindy hop and the Savoy Ballroom. I love this one — it was made at a time when they could still get two of Lindy hop's real pioneers, Frankie Manning and Norma Miller, to talk onscreen about the dance and their own experiences (and then I get to tell my students that, while I never got to study with Frankie Manning myself, I did learn from one of his students... Always nice when you can pull out that dance family tree!).

There's a section in which the narrator speaks of how the dance changed once it was taken up and taught in (white) dance studios — with accompanying archival footage making it obvious how this wild, grounded, lightning-fast African-derived dance was tamed into something bouncy, upright, rigid, and contained. At the end, when I asked students to share what they had noticed or felt was significant, T____ spoke up (I'm paraphrasing here, of course): "I thought it was interesting how when the white people took the dance, they made it all stiff and completely different from what it was... It was as if they liked the style but they didn't like the way the people who made it were, so they took parts and changed it into their own thing..." Good observation, of course — and all I could think of when she was saying this was wow, what a great introduction to the whole concept of cultural appropriation! I hope this will be the first of many more interesting discussions...

Reflections on the Shapes project — open minds...

We finished the Shapes project last week — using symmetrical and asymmetrical group shapes, transitions, and various levels, danced to amorphous background music. The last journal entry before Thanksgiving break asked students to reflect on their experience creating a dance starting from still shapes rather than steps to music, and whether it helped them to discover anything new about dance. This is often a difficult project for high school dancers — so many students think of dance as what they see on music videos, and the idea of creating a dance that is not responding to a particular song is completely foreign to them. Even so, I found almost universally positive responses in the journal entries — here is a small sample:

"I did discover new ways of dance forms. Dance really just expands further and further..."

"This project was interesting for me because I never really had to create shapes in a choreography before... [it] helped me learn that there is more to dance than just steps."

"I'm used to fluid, constant movements to the beat of a song — it was almost eye-opening trying to come up with this choreography. It made me realize that dance isn't all about the leaps and turns. I always forget that dance is a form of creativity and not always a competitive sport."

"Every dance that I saw was beautiful. The dances reminded me of nature... Like the wind, trees, and so on. Every dance was unique and original. I discovered that there can be a dance to anything, whether it's the wind blowing in the trees or a song."

Hooray for minds opened to new ways of making dance!

little things I'm thankful for…

Of course the big thing I am thankful for this year is a functional dance program in a school close to home — but here are a few of the little things that are a part of that:

Students who greet me with smiles on their faces when I walk down the hall in the morning…

One of my guys writing on the bottom of his last journal entry “I love this class!!!” (with a big heart scrawled alongside)…

A dance studio I can decorate with all the photos I’ve pulled out of dance magazines over the decades...

A wonderfully congenial fellow teacher in the girls' locker room...

And last but not least, enthusiastic students whose minds are open to new experiences!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Mills Repertory Dance Company

Last Friday we had a field trip to Mills College to watch a performance of the Mills Repertory Dance Company (MRDC), a company of dance department undergrads and graduate students. The MRDC makes the Friday matinee of their fall performance complementary to students from east bay schools — a wonderful opportunity and a great community resource. This was my fifth excursion there, with  five different schools now; with forty-one students, it was certainly the biggest group I have ever taken!

It is always a bit of an adventure, organizing my first field trip in a new school district, figuring out all the procedures and regulations... But it got done and Friday morning we got on a bus to Oakland. When we arrived the performers were still warming up, so my students scattered to explore the campus (especially the cafe in the quad), making it even more exciting when I had to round them all up in time for the performance. they did all make it back, and were a lovely audience, respectful and attentive (after some of my experiences over the past couple of years, being able to watch the performance without worrying about what my students might be doing was quite a treat).

The company performed four pieces — two by resident choreographers/professors, one by a visiting choreographer from New York, and one a re-staging of a Merce Cunningham event. It was a nice mix of pieces — all modern dance with one more in a dance-theater vein, involving benches as props and the dancers’ voices as the score. It was a pleasure to see the Cunningham piece, as the movement style was so distinctively Cunningham I could have guessed the choreographer without the program.

I was curious how my students would react to modern dance and dance theater, as most of them are beginners with little experience of dance beyond what they see on TV or videos — and those with experience are studio-trained in ballet, jazz or Hawai’ian — so what we were seeing would be entirely new and well out of their comfort zone. I have not yet seen all their reviews and reflections (many are coming in after the Thanksgiving holiday); but from what I have read so far, they seemed quite impressed by the technical expertise of the dancers and had some perceptive observations on the choreography (although many were somewhat bemused by the dance theater piece). All so far were glad they were able to see the performance (I haven’t read any opinions that “it was all boring,”which is what I would be afraid of with teens). It is gratifying to know that my beginning students can already appreciate some fairly sophisticated abstract choreography — in all, I was very pleased at a satisfying trip!

technique vs. improvisation / composition

Saturday morning I attended a collegial brunch for east bay dance teachers, organized by the California Dance Education Organization. There were four of us from public schools scattered around the east bay from Richmond to Antioch, along with two graduate students studying dance pedagogy at Mills College and a handful of undergrads from UC Berkeley who teach in various elementary schools and private programs in Berkeley.

It is always gratifying to be able to connect with other dance teachers, since — unlike math or English teachers — we are usually the only ones on our campuses. There were of course some lively conversations about our programs, upcoming events, and the like... But the most interesting discussion for me was the perpetual dilemma of how much technique instruction and improvisation/composition work we include in our classes.

I come to the subject from a long-time focus on moving student choreographers beyond the "cute steps to cool music" stage. At the high school where I did my student teaching years ago, the program had been focused almost entirely on improvisation and the principles of composition — and I could certainly see the difference in the sophistication of the student choreography. When I observed the performances at other high schools, I saw that the dancers were technically proficient, but their dances were essentially collections of their favorite steps and flashy tricks, usually performed in unison; whereas the students at my student-teaching school were using canon and antiphonal forms, varied groupings, and a wide range of moods and qualities... and more than that, their dances often had personal meaning (beyond "these are my favorite moves"). So from the very beginning of my public school career, I knew which direction I wanted to go.

But it is that mix — how much technique work? How much improvisation? — that is difficult to get just right. One of my colleagues, who originally came from a contact improvisation background, said that she has gravitated more and more towards technique over the years (even though she finds it much more difficult to teach), because her students so much want to learn steps and phrases and dances... and she wants her classes to be joyful. I certainly can't disagree — in my experience, students who begin dance as teenagers expect to be taught steps and movements, and are uncomfortable with improvisation until they have a fair amount of experience under their belts. (Although, in my work in East Oakland, I had more of a dichotomy between the boys and the girls: the boys loved improvisation, since many of them already practiced improvisational street dance forms such as TURF dance; while the girls tended to look at me as if I'd lost my mind when I asked them to improvise).

And yet and yet... as a choreographer, I can't forget the difference in the dances of students trained in the craft of choreography and the elements of dance — and helping students to create meaning will always be a priority for me. My compromise is that I work in units and I try to do about half-and-half: every technique unit is followed by a few directed improvisation lessons, leading into a choreography project. It worked for me at EOSA (although I did always get those girls complaining about explorations when "you haven't taught me how to dance yet," eventually they got the creation bug)... and so far at DeAnza, my beginners have been remarkably open to exploring the elements and working on choreography (maybe because more of them have some studio experience already?). I will be interested to see how my thinking evolves as I work in my new program...

Shapes and levels

Now that Hallowe'en and Thriller are over, we're back to creative work and choreography. This time we're taking up shapes and levels, which is a project that I've been using since I first started teaching, which I actually got from Susan Brown, one of my master teachers when I was student teaching. I'm not sure how it gels with creative dance teaching theory, since it focuses on two different dance elements — but I do like the way it gets beginning choreographers out of the "cute steps to favorite songs" rut right off the bat.

Over the years, I have done some refining of my creative work lessons leading up to the project. We began the week with a lesson on Level, starting with a basic freeze dance, focusing on shapes in various levels and shape copying ("make a high twisted shape… change it by changing one arm… one knee… look at E___'s shape and copy it… make your shape turn, make your shape jump, make your shape travel… Drop your shape and make a low, wide shape…"). We then took up the Erosion Game partner activity — one partner takes a high shape, the other partner molds him/her into a lower shape then copies it to be molded in turn… After four or five changes from high level to low level, the composition is all the shapes performed in unison, eroding to the ground. Simple but effective (and students always enjoy working with partners).

The second day, we worked on shapes and shape transitions. After a very brief recap freeze dance, we built on the previous day's work with shape copying for some Shape Tag — half the class freezes in a still shape while the other half dances around and through them, "tagging" a still dancer by copying her shape — with lots of giggles from the dancers as they found shapes to copy; then we worked on transitioning into and out of shapes. This is important to get dancers out of just dropping a shape and taking up the next one — so we did a lot of explorations with specific transitions: "melt out of your shape, glide to a new spot, and wiggle back into it… explode out of shape #1, gallop to a new spot and then stretch into shape #2…"

The third day we worked specifically with symmetry (and asymmetry) — we started by looking at some photos of symmetrical shapes in dance, then tried some of the "Man-on-a-stick" improv from Blom and Chaplin's book The Intimate Act of Choreography (what would we ever do without Blom and Chaplin?). Then we worked in pairs with some mirroring and trying a few symmetrical and asymmetrical shapes; and then each pair joined with one or two others to try a few group shapes.

After the three days of exploration, the group project began on Thursday: Create a dance that includes at least six group still shapes (at least three symmetrical and three asymmetrical) plus transitions between shapes, using a variety of levels. I always caution the students that we will be practicing these to amorphous instrumentals without a strong beat, as the starting point for the dance should be the shapes and not steps to music. I usually get a fair amount of whining about that part, but this time only a couple of groups asked about being able to use particular music (I just told them "let's get your dance set first, then think about it"), and for the most part all groups have dived in and gotten off to a good start. We hope to be finished the end of this coming week (though not sure, since it's only a three-day week) — I'm anxious to see how their dances come out!

Thriller flash mob

The Thriller flash mob was a success (and, after all the organizational logistics were over, a lot of fun)! When all was said and done, three dozen students ended up performing surrounded by a huge crowd in the quad on a drizzly Hallowe'en. The cast kept growing last week, as each time we practiced outside more students found the confidence to ask "can I still be on the list to dance?" (of course!)

When the day came, we were sweating out the rain — wouldn't you know it, in the middle of this drought, our first rainy day in weeks had to fall on Hallowe'en. The kids had nearly all said they would still want to dance outside if it was raining-but-not-pouring… Although at 10 in the morning it was nearly pouring, by lunchtime it had cleared to clouds and a few drizzly drops, a perfect atmosphere for the dance.

The kids roped me into dancing with them on this one — after asking at morning rehearsal, for the last time, "are you going to dance?" they pretty unanimously agreed they wanted me there with them, so after some hesitation I gave in… And in the end, I was glad they convinced me, because it was quite exhilarating to dance along with so many wildly enthusiastic students (especially after the year I had last year).

On the suggestion of a couple of students, we began by "zombie-marching" out from the
main building and the gym to meet in the middle, and when the actual dance started we were immediately enclosed in a solid wall of spectators — it seemed as if the whole school was out watching (all with cellphone cameras out, of course). All in all, it was a fairly splashy start to getting the dance program visible on campus!

classroom community

This year I've revived a tradition I had tried out at EOSA, my end-of-the-week class closure Recognitions Circle (I got this one from Rebecca, who teaches at Presidio Middle School in SF — thanks, Rebecca!). At the end of each Friday class, we gather in a circle and I ask for students to recognize someone "who helped you this week, or inspired you, or just did something great that you noticed…" Some weeks we have more recognitions than others, of course (just as I am diligent about leaving enough time in some weeks more than others) — but I am already, after nine weeks, starting to see a classroom community building.

Early on, I heard a lot of very specific or very general appreciations, especially of friends: "Mary helped me figure out that new step," or "I want to appreciate my whole group for our teamwork on our choreography project." But then students began to appreciate classmates whose names they didn't even know ("I don't know her name... but the girl in the pink t-shirt is so on top of all the steps" — a great opportunity to learn each others' names, of course); and a couple of weeks ago, someone offered "J___ inspires me to want to dance like him — he puts 100% into everything he does, and he looks great!" Just this past Friday, as we were practicing the Thriller dance, one student who had sat out the class observing wanted to recognize the whole class: "I hadn't planned on performing in the Thriller flashmob, but watching you all dance it today, you looked so great it makes me want to be in it after all!"

Of course, the next step will be to phrase the appreciations more in terms of specific dance vocabulary… but for now, it is lovely to see a supportive community coming together in the dance room.

Thriller

For the last two weeks of October we are working on the dance sequence from Michael Jackson's Thriller. I remembered trying to teach a little bit of it to my middle school students last year — and it occurred to me that, in terms of making my dance program visible, what could possibly be better than a Thriller flashmob in the quad at lunch on Hallowe'en? I put it out to the kids, and had plenty enough enthusiastic responses to go ahead with it.

(Ordinarily I might be a little leery of performing someone else's choreography... but since there is an organization called Thrill the World which teaches steps and organizes simultaneous performances around the world every year, I figure I'm probably okay with this one).

I introduced the dance by reminding students that this is a serious, technical jazz dance, choreographed by a Broadway choreographer in an apparently Fosse-inspired style… and that it wold be difficult, but that we would do the best we can with it (and have fun too). We're currently in the middle of it, and although some of the technical details are going to be beyond my beginning students, some of the dancers are doing quite well with the material — and there are a few who seem to have been studying the video all their lives, and are often one step ahead of me in teaching it!

One thing that was interesting to me about all this was that when I asked my classes how many of them had ever seen the Thriller video at least once, nearly every hand went up. I realized that the video was made more than thirty years ago… When I was in high school, thirty-year-old music was from the big band era of the war years (there, I've just dated myself), and no one but no one was still listening to it — we'd been through the '60s and protest music, after all, and were way too cool for that old stuff! So the idea that kids these days can still appreciate music from the '80s is kind of amazing to me. Michael Jackson certainly has some staying power, at any rate.

first creative work unit: directions and facings

For years, I have asked my Beginning Dance students to use various devices (repetition, changing the order of steps, adding embellishments with arms, etc.) to expand on our class jazz phrase for their first choreography project. I always did it this way to make it easier for students who had never danced before and who may not feel confident about creating their own movements. I also liked to get across the concept that a dance can be created out of just a few steps, repeated and rearranged in different ways, to get away from the tendency of beginning choreographers to just keep making up more and more steps with no sense of unity — my first assignment sheet always said "the purpose of this assignment is to discover how much dance material you can make from only a few steps: building a dance out of a few movements, repeated in different ways, allows the end to relate back to the beginning, and helps the dance make sense as a whole."

But this year, starting the year in a new school, I decided to start with basic dance elements instead and see how it goes (definitely saving that part about discovering how much dance you can make from a few steps for a later project, because it is very important). We focused on locomotor and axial movements, using various facings and traveling directions — beginning with a few days of exploration and improvisation, of course! The first day we worked on locomotor versus axial movement: creep around the room... melt and rise in place... melt and rise while traveling… do a turn that travels… a turn in place… find another turn in place… Then adding sequences (glide backwards, twist in place, hop sideways...) and a very short solo composition, shown to one partner. The next day we worked on traveling directions, starting with the "walk in straight lines" exploration from Blom & Chaplin's Moment of Movement ("walk simply in straight lines… vary the speed…"), adding backwards, sideways, and diagonal directions as well as various actions and variations. The third day we explored facings of the room with partners and ended with a short pair composition before breaking into groups to begin their choreography project.

The project was pretty simple: create a short dance that uses locomotor movement in at least three directions and that uses movement in at least four facings. They worked on it for about a week and a half — ordinarily, I try to get projects done in about a week, but since they were consistently working hard on their compositions and felt they needed more time to perfect them, I let them have it (it would have been different if they had been wasting time, but almost all groups had started working right away and kept on planning and practicing through all the time I gave them.

In the end, I was very pleased with the variety of their work... Even though most of my students are beginners, especially with composition, many groups were spontaneously using variations in level and tempo and lots of interesting pattern changes… And because of the facings requirement, many groups began their dances facing upstage, which is a somewhat unusual choice for beginning choreographers. I will be interested to see how their work progresses!

eclectic music!

This week and last, after finishing up our first choreography project (more about that soon), we have been working on jazz technique… For the first jazz unit, while the kids were still getting used to me, I played mostly pop music. But this time I’ve branched out and at least 3 days out of each week I’ve used songs from my non-pop playlists – mostly world music, a bit of classic Motown – and not heard any complaints! After a year in middle school (where music isn’t music if it hasn’t played on the radio in the past three months), this has certainly been a refreshing change. Once this week, on my “classic Motown” day, I put on “Mr. Big Stuff” for isolations, and heard one kid say “that’s my song!” (Really? It was on the radio in my high school years, decades ago…). Another day, I was playing an instrumental piece by a fairly obscure world fusion artist (happened to be "Ethiopians" by Eyal Sela), and someone asked me "what's the name of that song?"… Hooray for being able to use eclectic music in class!

New school year… and building a new dance program!

Well, it's really high time I wrote about what has come about over the summer, and my new school for the new school year (and, I hope, for the indefinite future). I am now building the (nearly) new dance program at De Anza High School, back in the district where I live. This is the school where I assisted the PE teacher who was assigned two periods of Dance last year, in hopes of growing the program… Well, the program has grown, from about 50 students last year to over 100 in three classes now — and I have very high hopes for the future!

Even so, it took some doing to keep the program going, as it nearly became a casualty of our credential situation. The circumstance in this case was that the district had a teacher (credentialed in PE) who needed a placement, and went to place him in the open "PE/Dance" position at De Anza — which led to the budding dance program nearly being dissolved when the teacher said he couldn't teach dance! It took the intervention of an arts-focused school board member to save the program -- she reminded the district administration about the district's stated commitment to the arts, and couched the problem as a mistake needing correction. In short order, the position was re-opened in order to hire a dance specialist, and I am now teaching three classes full of enthusiastic students. I have waited much too long to write about this — I am still catching up from starting the school year two weeks late, as well as teaching more than full time — but I do hope to be more regular about writing this year, even if in little bits. Happy new school year!

(the picture is of the empty dance studio — empty, since my students have not signed photo releases yet — not too large, but so far a lovely little space to teach in).

frustrations with dance education advocacy, part 2…

Shortly after I posted here about my difficulties with advocating for dance programs in various public and private schools, I wrote briefly about it (along with a link to the original post) on the K-12 education forum of the National Dance Education Organization (NDEO)… and seem to have opened up quite a can of worms (or at least jolted a lively discussion into being)!

Immediately, I got a few emails directly back to me —one from a teacher in NY who is in a terrible situation but feels trapped because of the dearth of other programs, another suggesting that private schools need to be told not how dance will benefit their current students, but how it will how it will benefit the school financially by attracting more students (interesting point, I thought). Some of the initial responses on the forum were a bit disappointing — platitudes like "follow the three P's: Persistence, Perseverance and Patience," and asking if I had started an honor society chapter at my school or if I had my students do outreach in the community, as well as reminders about all the advocacy resources available from NDEO (as if I didn't know about and use them already!). So, after a week or so, I posted again — trying to put it as diplomatically as I could, but saying that much of the advice sounded like encouragement for someone new to this (which I am anything but!), and mentioning the work my students had done, when I still had a dance program…

Once I had chimed back in, things got rolling… A former Visual and Performing Arts coordinator for the state of California responded with a continuation of my rant, raising the great inequities in support for the four arts disciplines in our state: "California has all four arts as academic courses. The support for each arts discipline is not equal. Since 1979 the equity disparity widens and the arts are dropped for math, reading and science… Arts funds given to districts specifically for arts education now, with the state's "economic distress," may be used for what ever they need - that wouldn't happen to designated funds for math, reading or science." A prominent researcher in the value of dance education widened the discussion to include teachers in all subjects: "as I read current accounts from teachers of all subject areas, I hear the same concerns repeated over and over. Great teachers are leaving the profession in droves, and administrators are so pressured to reduce the ranks and hire younger, more malleable, less expensive teachers that they are resorting to blind ignorance and indifference to the facts." Another colleague and dance education mentor spoke to the issue on a more local level: "in our county, the arts education team is probably one of the biggest obstacles to dance. Having neither the energy nor the will to understand dance, they time and again bring money to visual art and music. When they must include all four disciplines, they often default to a non-standards-based dance provider"; and she quoted creative dance icon Anne Green Gilbert as once saying "when they say arts education, they don't mean dance."

The discussion shifted as various responders brought up their work in LGBT or environmental activism, and explored ideas around creating urgency and becoming change agents. I suspect the conversation will continue in other forms, especially as teachers meet in the fall at the annual conference… In any case, I found I was certainly not alone in my thinking, and it was good to get the conversation going.

end-of-season at the studio: creative dance!

Last weekend finished the season at the dance studio. Since the spring recital was in the beginning of June, I had the rest of the month (three Saturdays) to do nothing but creative dance lessons (this is a neighborhood dance studio where parents send their kids to learn ballet, jazz, and tap — so all through the year I use as much creative work as I can, but the focus is on technique). I considered devising some work that would build and deepen over three weeks; but then I remembered how spotty attendance can be in June, as families take off on vacations, and thought better of it… So I took it as an opportunity to pick some of my favorite lessons that could work as "one-offs" to see how they would work with the studio kids. It turned out to be a joy to watch these dancers, immersed in technique throughout the year, throw themselves open to creative work.

Because of the low attendance after the show we combine classes, which means a pretty wide range of ages working together — so I kept all the lessons pretty general in terms of level. The first week I brought along my bag of scarves for the "magician and scarf" lesson — beginning with a brief Brain Dance in a circle, then an exploration with partners, one partner manipulating the scarf while the other imitated the scarf's movements in her own body (I guided them with wiggle, float, stretch-squash, fold-unfold, and spiral/circle); we also practiced trading the scarves, and still shapes with both partners attached or touching the scarf, using different levels and sizes. The composition was short and simple: begin with a scarf-attached shape, then each partner choose one movement from the exploration as leader ("magician") for the other partner to follow (be sure to trade the scarf in an interesting way), and finish with another scarf-attached shape.

The next week the youngest classes worked on size/range contrasts, while all the other classes tried the "map dance": draw a beginning and ending point; then a pathway from beginning to ending including some curved lines, some straight lines, and at least one zigzag; then add stopping places for still shapes, axial movements, and jumps (we did three for the younger classes, five for the older kids) — then practice the dance you drew! Since we hadn't done much creative work for a while, we warmed up with a freeze dance incorporating lots of elements to pull them out of their ordinary technique habits… In our short (half-hour) classes, when it came time to show, almost everyone danced with their maps still in hand — but all were engaged and there was some lovely and surprising work (one student chose to make her beginning point in the bathroom so that she could enter from offstage…).

Last week, we worked on shapes and levels with the "erosion game," again in pairs… We began as usual with a general freeze dance to warm up, this time focused on shape copying; then partners took turns molding each other from a high-level shape to a somewhat lower-level shape, copying the shape, and being molded in turn, until they reached the floor. The composition was the five or six shapes it took to go from high to low, performed in unison. Although the class was too short to go deeply into the exploration, still there were some unusual shapes and movements in the compositions… and because of the combined classes, we had some interesting pairings as well (it was very sweet to see one 7-year-old little girl working with her 12-year-old brother).

It was also nice to see the creative work spilling into other parts of the class… At the end of the younger classes, Angela (my former studio partner and now studio owner, since I "retired" from the studio five years ago) was finishing class with an obstacle course on the mats. Ordinarily, she would set up a dot to balance on, a circle or two to jump or hop into, a cone to run around, a tube to crawl through, and/or the "mud puddle" to leap over… but this time, she simply set up a dot, a cone, a couple of circles, and the mud puddle, and said "you know what we usually do — now take these obstacles and do whatever you want!" The first couple of kids did pretty much the usual with some minor variations — maybe balancing on the dot with one leg out to the side instead of in passé or arabesque; but the third dancer up, instead of hopping or jumping in the circle, plopped into sitting criss-cross in the middle of the circle and then crawled out on all fours. After that, the kids let loose with their ideas on manipulating a dot, a cone, a circle, and a mud puddle: running through or stomping on the mud puddle, juggling the cone, picking it up and using it as a pointy hat… So nice to see the kids letting themselves go wild!

Frustrations with dance education advocacy

Once again, it's been too long since I've written here — partially because such a difficult year at my school has just not been very pleasant to write about; but also in large part because I spend so much time searching for a position in a school where a dance program might be more viable, it has left little time for writing… So, one thing I have written about lately (in an article for the CDEA newsletter) is my long-term frustrations with attempting to bring dance to schools without it, and I thought it would be appropriate here as well…

I have been in public education for 17 years. Most of those years (aside from the seven I taught at EOSA) I have spent much time and energy advocating for dance education in schools which have no dance programs. Unfortunately, I feel as if I’ve been beating my head against the same wall for all those years – there are so many schools which boast comprehensive, award-winning music, visual art, and theater programs, but offer no dance at all. A few examples: one Bay Area high school offers seven different drama courses, from Beginning Drama through Stagecraft to Directing; eight music courses, including three levels of Band, two levels of Percussion, Jazz Ensemble, Concert Choir, and String Orchestra; and sixteen visual arts courses encompassing various levels of ceramics, drawing & painting, photography, and design — but no dance (except as one unit in Core PE)! That school's district, encompassing five large high schools, offers no dance at all among the fifty-two VAPA courses in the district course catalog (but does include Dance among eight requirements of one PE course). One well-regarded private school, in its promotional materials, boasts "every student involved in esteemed performing and visual arts and music programs" – but includes no dance in the curriculum.

I've always tried to emphasize that the state content standards specify four arts disciplines, while so many schools only offer two or three; that dance is the only subject which combines an arts discipline with physical activity; as well as critical thinking, spatial thinking, problem-solving, college-readiness (viz. the CSU/UC "g" requirement), etc. Over the years, I've been told "we're a small school, we don't have room in the schedule for luxuries like dance" or "we have so many arts courses already," or “we value the arts here, but we prioritize what we presently have…”

One bay area school district recently completed an assessment of all arts programs, and found that middle school dance was a huge gap — while many of the elementary schools have dance programs through arts providers or in-house teachers, and the one large high school has an excellent and comprehensive dance program, there is no dance at all in any of three middle schools. I met and brainstormed with the district arts coordinator, and we agreed that an itinerant teacher shared among all three middle schools could make it more feasible for any school to rebuild a program from just one or two classes. Unfortunately, none of the three principals was able to find room in the budget for even one dance class – so middle school dance will continue to be a huge gap.

Another large public high school recently completed new PE and performing arts buildings including a dance studio, but found no room in the budget for a dance specialist – so a PE generalist with no dance background or experience (but a specialty in team sports) was assigned to teach two sections of Dance! I assisted her with curriculum ideas this year and guest-taught one class per month, and had high hopes for helping to expand the program (with a "real" dance teacher) next year. But though the department had been optimistic that increased enrollment could warrant adding a dance specialist, the district decided that the school should host JROTC instead — so the dance classes will be taught by a non-dance teacher for another year.

This is, of course, not new: years ago, I found various schools which were on the cusp of adding dance to the curriculum, but at which all efforts failed. The VAPA department chair at one high school was certain of new arts classes for the next school year – “the arts pathway is going to be a reality and dance classes will begin in the fall.” By the next spring, those plans had withered away due to a budget crisis – and ten years later, that school still has no dance in the curriculum. Another VAPA chair urged me to contact the principal, (“I would love it if we could get a dance program going”) – but the principal never responded, and the program never came about.

I have also advocated for dance education at various "independent" schools — so many of which boast their fabulous arts programs but have no dance at all. Many seemed at first to have excellent potential, but after years of messages back and forth, those prospects faded away.

One private K-8 school advertises its emphasis on critical thinking and project-based learning (such a great fit for creative dance program!). I contacted the associate head of the school and got a prompt response asking for a phone meeting. In the phone meeting, I described a well-planned creative dance program, and he wrote about it in his school blog: “rather than force students to simply learn steps or routines, Avilee teaches them deeper concepts such as line, shape, path, range, level, tempo, rhythm, and weight... Clearly this is not the unit on square dancing we all experienced in our own educations! This conversation made me excited to continue to look at the possibilities around adding dance to our program...” However, after the idea was brought to the school governance committee, eventually it came to “maybe you could talk to our after-school coordinator,” and then even that possibility evaporated.

I likewise kept in contact with a small private high school in the east bay, where a colleague was the VAPA chair. After some dialogue, I was told that the academic dean had “expressed that there may be interest as well as need for beginning a dance program next year.” The dean contacted me about setting up a meeting in the summer, but my message offering possible dates was met with no response… until the fall, when one more contact generated a brush-off: “I don’t foresee us needing a dance program in the near future, our current arts program meets our needs...”

These are, again, just a few examples of advocacy failing to make a dent in the scarcity of dance programs in this state. In California, only 14% of elementary schools, 10% of middle schools, and 34% of high schools offer standards-based courses in dance (according to the Unfinished Canvas report); and only 0.28% of California students are enrolled in a dance course (according to DOE statistics)! Bringing a new program into a school is an incredibly difficult endeavor, and in so many cases, even with an initial positive response, following through to getting a new program accepted and running can seem nearly impossible. It is hard not to get completely discouraged...

an impromptu lesson

I haven't posted much recently — in a challenging year, it has been difficult to find things to write about that don't sound like complaining… But I did have a great little impromptu lesson with kids at the studio last weekend.

I have been back teaching at the studio on Saturday mornings this year – teaching some ballet (since that is what moms bring their little girls to learn) and as much creative work as I can fit in. I also occasionally sub for another teacher in the afternoons, which this close to the spring performance usually just entails cleaning up the parts of the dances kids have already learned… So I was doing just that with the advanced teens jazz class in the afternoon, when 15 minutes from the end of class, one of them mentioned “I think maybe Nicole wanted you to help us get ideas for our solos for this dance.” “Oh... you mean some improvisation to help get you started?” “Yes!” “Cool! I wish we had started a little earlier, but let’s see what we can do…”

So I quickly ran to my dance bag, took out my little pack of action-word cards, and picked out a few that I thought would fit well with mood of their dance. They were working to “Feeling Good” by Nina Simone (yay! some classic music for these teens!)… I pulled out push, pull, slither, glide, sway, and swing, along with leap, slash, explode, and stomp for punctuation. We explored those movements as much as we had time for, pairing up some actions: show me lots of ways to slither (high, low, curved paths, zigzag paths, with your heads, knees, arms...), punctuate your slithering with exploding (tiny, huge, arms only, legs only, explode inward...); and the same with push/pull and leaping, gliding and stomping, etc. We didn’t have time for a real improvisation, so I just gave them a couple of minutes to review all of the actions they had explored to see what felt good to put together; then they showed whatever very short movement phrase they had come up with, to be the basis for their solos. Some of them came up with some movements that were way out of what I would consider their comfort zones (those standard pique turns and leaps that good technical teen dancers like to fall back on) — it was such a pleasure to see them diving into their explorations with wild abandon… It was also a good teaching moment for me — I’ve long said that I could practically teach technique in my sleep, but I have to obsessively plan creative work lessons –  so it was nice to know I could pull out a successful lesson (however short) at the drop of a hat!

Teaching practice adjustments (or, what I'm missing this year....)

As far as those adjustments in my teaching practice, there have been a couple of big ones, neither of which I'm really particularly happy about. One is that I still have not tried requiring regular journal entries for these classes — as I wrote about earlier, the first time I supplied paper it was crumpled up and thrown all over the room, used as footballs or paper airplanes, so I just abandoned the idea for a while. The next time I tried was in October, when we were unable to use the auditorium for three days and went to the library for video observations and writing instead. Some of the students did fabulous, insightful work (reminding me why I really miss reading those regular journal entries); but so many tore up the paper and left it (again) in a mess all over the room… That. coupled with the extremely short time I have to get anything done in my classes (about 25 minutes after dressing, hiking across campus from the locker room to the auditorium, then reversing the process at the end of class), has kept me from being too eager to pull out the writing paper again… leaving a big hole in my teaching, at least for the time being.

The other major adjustment has been in the "perform" part of the Create-Perform-Respond cycle. From the very beginning all of the kids were absolutely horrified at the thought of showing their work to their classmates. On the last couple of creative work / composition units, during the two days of exploring the elements, I did manage to get the 6th graders to show their individual phrases, one-half the class at a time — but that was as far as they were willing to go. When we got into the group compositions, I once again began hearing "we're not going to have to show this to anyone else, are we???" The only way I have been able to convince all groups to even finish their projects is by promising that the only person who will see their completed work is me (and my video camera, for assessment purposes). My compromise has been to come around with the camera and record them during general practice time, right where they're practicing, while everyone else is also practicing and therefore presumably not watching — no showings, so no responding either. Of course, this neatly chops off a huge part of the experience of dance — a performing art form, after all — but so far it has been the only way to get the kids to let me see their compositions at all! I keep hoping that as we go along they'll develop the confidence to begin showing — maybe in the spring semester, we'll see…

Directions & facings project

The composition project I gave just before winter break was pretty simple: create a dance using any steps, movements, and dance styles you like (school-appropriate, of course!), a long as you include movement that travels in at least three different directions and that faces at least three different walls or corners. We started out with a couple of days of explorations — first just reviewing axial and locomotor movement, then working with various traveling directions and axial facings. I included a lot of actions they could play with in various ways, and by the end of the second day many students were getting into the spirit pretty well.

Then they began working in groups on the composition, and I ran into a new problem: most of the 7th graders (those that were participating and working on the project, at any rate) wanted to dance to a song called "Payaso de Rodeo," which I soon discovered is the music for a simple line dance well-known in the local Mexican-American community, much the way the electric slide was well-known to mostly everyone a couple of decades ago. The dance itself does nominally fulfill the basic requirements of the project, as it travels (minimally) in four directions and faces four walls — the complete dance is: slide/chassé to the right, then left, then back, then front, then one-quarter turn to the next wall and repeat... over and over and over...

I had a very hard time getting across to them just why this wasn't okay for their project, especially since some students who hadn't been participating before actually started to join in ("but we're dancing, what do you want?"). I had to sit them down and explain that this was a creative work / composition project, that I was expecting them to create something, and that just getting up and running through a dance that I could see random people doing in innumerable YouTube videos was not creating! I used the analogy that if their English teacher asked them to create a short story based on their own experiences, using certain elements, it would not fulfill the assignment to just write down a story that everyone already knows, like Snow White or the Three Little Pigs. A few of them tried to tell me that their English teacher would be okay with that (I told them I was pretty skeptical, and that I would certainly check with their English teacher!)… They did finally get the point, chose new music, and created a dance of their own (pretty basic, but their using their own ideas at least).

This did, of course, give me an idea that what these kids really want to do in my class is something they already know how to do — which is a little weird to think about in a learning situation, but could be related to making them feel successful, or at least in their comfort zone… something to ponder for the future, at any rate.