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.
Sunday, October 26, 2014
Wednesday, October 22, 2014
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.
(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.
Sunday, October 19, 2014
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!
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!
Sunday, October 12, 2014
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!
Wednesday, October 8, 2014
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).
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).
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