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).
Sunday, July 6, 2014
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.
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.
Saturday, July 5, 2014
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!
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!
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