“Othering” — beginning to form the dance

For our collaborative dance, we had managed to come to a consensus on a theme — “othering.” So, now to begin the dance! Again, I started by having the dancers write: since art is most powerful when it has an element of the personal, write about how othering affects your life or those around you, or what aspect holds the most meaning for you… (Of course, with the caveat to share only as much as they felt absolutely comfortable sharing.) I am always astounded at how my students can open up their hearts on the page — and this group showed me again how thoughtful they can be.  I read stories of racism and stereotyping of Blacks, Asians, Latinos, and Muslims, of sexism and homophobia… But beyond the personal stories, students grew analytical:some mused on othering as the root of all bullying, or on how oppressed peoples internalize their oppression; one wrote that othering connects all violence, and about how it “has become normalized; it’s become natural to see the white man degrading the black man… to hear about the raping of women… to push around the kid who doesn’t have enough money… then say ‘it’s human nature.’”

I also asked for ideas of how they would portray this issue in dance, and for their opinion of my role as teacher (i.e., should I choreograph a section, or just help to organize their ideas?). There emerged a general consensus on the basic shape of the dance — nearly everyone mentioned beginning in small  “us vs. them” groups, then ending hopefully, in unity and empowerment. One dancer proposed that to show empowerment, all would freeze and “one person could be dancing to show how a movement only needs one person to start,” then the others join — a powerful image!

As to my role as their teacher, it seemed at first that these budding choreographers didn’t fully trust their own skills, as nearly everyone said they would like me to choreograph at least part of the dance, and they could “add our own touches.” But then…

I came to them with a general shape of the dance, based on all they had written and discussed: beginning with one group representing he “majority” culture, then various smaller groups entering and being somehow dominated or swallowed up by the majority, and finally the lone dancer stepping forward to rebel and start the unity phrase for others to join… And that is when these lovely students took the dance and ran with it, as one dancer spoke up: “I think we should start with the smaller “othered” groups before the dominant group comes in to take them all over…” There was general consensus on that being the better idea, and just like that the class took ownership of their dance!

Next we got into small groups for the first section. I divided them mostly by movement style, making sure that the “dominant” group (I resisted the term “majority,” since straight white males are in no way an actual majority) was made up of dancers who had said they would be okay with that. Their first prompt for group work was simply to come up with some distinctive movement for their own small group phrase — and this is where the dancers began to truly make it their own. Although I hadn’t specified any focus for the various small groups, each group came up with its own population to focus on, and with it an idea for their group’s denouement… One group focused on homophobia and gay rights, and decided that they would fight back when the dominant group tried to swallow them up. Another group chose racism, specifically directed at Blacks and Asians, and determined to create their movement with ribbons which the dominant group would snatch away as if to erase their cultures. And the last group chose to portray immigrants, and imagined that the dominant group would scatter them to the corners of the stage, symbolizing family separation — and that separation would be the “last straw” which would inspire one dancer to step forward in solidarity. They got to work in their groups, and fairly quickly created some movement for the first section — the collaboration was on its way!

Full-class collaboration – finding a theme and a consensus

Now that I have a real Dance Production class again, I decided that instead of teaching them a dance for their one full-class performance piece, I would set them on a collaborative project…  and one connected to something meaningful. The last time I tried something like this was with my last few DP classes at EOSA (including the class who created a powerful piece about youth killings in Oakland). After taking a workshop on theme-based projects at last year’s NDEO conference, and reading a couple of new articles about social justice projects, I was anxious to revive the idea – and I knew that this group of dancers, who are relatively inexperienced in dance but amazingly focused and serious about their choreography, would be ready to take it on.

So, as I have done in the past, I started with student writing. This time, we began very simply, with the dancers just listing some social justice issues they might be interested in creating dances about (some chose to write in more depth about actual choreography ideas, but most did just list some issues, as that was all I had asked). The issues they raised ran the gamut, from environmental destruction to domestic violence to racism and police brutality to xenophobia… So then came the hard job of deciding what issue we could all focus on. I told them I wasn’t going to just have them vote, that I didn’t want to go with majority rule because majority rule often leaves a minority unsatisfied (and after all, majority rule was just fine with chattel slavery in this country for two-and-a-half centuries) – instead, we needed to somehow come to consensus.

I started by having them get into small groups to talk about what commonalities they could find among all those social issues. The small groups then shared out to the whole class — some of what they talked about included “nearly everything connects with violence”… “many of these issues involve a hierarchy”… “absolute power connects a lot”… I posted their thoughts that I had written down onto Google Classroom (I hate how Google is taking over the world, but I have to admit GC has become a convenient tool), and asked them to think overnight about how we might tie all their issues together. The next day, after another brief discussion of what I had heard them say the day before, I mentioned the concept of “othering” — “us vs. them” — and asked if they thought it might actually be the common denominator to all their issues (I didn’t want to impose any ideas on them too quickly, but on the other hand we did have to find consensus at some point!). All agreed… We had found our idea!

New start, new Dance Production class

Well, it’s been years since I last wrote here – with 250-plus students to grade (more than half PE students, sigh), I just plain ran out of time. This year, I convinced my administration to transition me to (somewhat) part-time so that I could teach only dance, so I am hoping I will have enough time to start writing again. At still nearly fulltime (83%) I still feel pretty busy, but I’m going to try to be efficient with my time and at least write when big new things are happening.

So this year the dance program has grown to five classes – three level 1 (called Jazz Dance 1 in my district, for inexplicable reasons lost to history), one level 2 (Jazz 2), and one Dance Production. That is up from two Jazz 1 classes and one combined Jazz 2 / Dance Production last year – and only one Jazz 1 and one combined class the year before. The growth in my first-year classes I attribute completely to the three seniors who went out to our feeder middle school along with the counselors last spring, to talk to each eighth-grade class about why they should consider taking dance – they were so much better ambassadors for the program than I could ever be!

As far as the Dance Production class (the first time it’s been separate from Jazz 2 in four years, yay!), I had a lot of extremely focused, creative, and enthusiastic students in my Jazz 1 classes last year, and I was able to keep enough of them in the program to fill both Jazz 2 and Dance Production (at least as much as the district needed to not take away the classes). The new Dance Production class is a dream – 20 dancers open for any new challenges I throw at them (more about that later). I am so looking forward to working with them this year!