distance learning choreography projects (1)

 Okay, about those choreography projects… Last spring, in emergency distance learning mode, I gave in and figured out assignments that each student could create and post individually – for the Jazz 1 students, I reverted to the Cinquain project (which I had originally planned to be the 4th-quarter lead-up project before the narrative final), in which they create their own simple poem in cinquain form, then create a dance to it; for Jazz 2, I made up a dancing with objects assignment, for students to find one thing in their houses to create a dance around (I have Wendy Jones from Lowell High School in SF to thank for the idea for that one).

But when this year started, with no prospects of going back to in-person in the dance room anytime soon, I was determined that this year’s students would not miss out on the concepts and curriculum I have refined over all of these years! So, somehow, we needed to be able to complete our choreography projects remotely. Due to breakout rooms, it mostly worked – the trick was finding the projects that were at least not too confusing to do over Zoom!

Jazz 1 began with our usual axial and locomotor movement / directions and facings project. I explained to the class, as I always do, that beginning choreographers tend to do a lot of movement in one place, facing the audience, so this project is designed to break them of that habit right away. The three main elements of the assignment were: 1. have a good beginning and ending; 2. do at least as much traveling movement as movement in one place; and 3. do at least as much movement facing sideways or backwards as facing your audience/camera. (I usually also require traveling movement in multiple directions, but this time I figured that getting any amount of real locomotor movement would be as much as I could hope for in their small spaces.) I made the assignment sheet that I usually hand out physically to each group into a PDF file, posted on their Google Classroom page so that they could keep referring to it, and I also reminded them of those three main points every time I saw them! They worked on their projects in groups in breakout rooms, and I recorded them in their breakout rooms as well. Instead of watching each others’ projects performed in real time in the dance room, students were asked to choose four of their classmates’ recordings to watch and respond to. All things considered, it worked out as well as I could have hoped for.

The second choreography project was a challenge – again, I did not want to completely give up on my usual Shapes and Levels project! I think it is the one project I have carried through all of my years of teaching, having gotten it from my master teachers during my student teaching year… I love it for the second project because after letting them use whatever music and steps they like for the first project (to get them hooked on the idea of creating together), I then hit them with a project that does not depend on “steps” and uses only amorphous background music – and it often seems to turn their thinking in a new direction and jolt them into new ideas of what choreography can be. The usual form is to create a dance of at least six group still shapes, three symmetrical and three asymmetrical, incorporating low and high levels, and using movements only for transitions.

Of course, the immediate problem here is that we can’t create anything like the group still shapes we would have in the dance room – I had to think differently about shapes myself! So I looked up some dance performances created through Zoom, and took some screen shots of interesting shapes to share with the students. I did still require symmetry and asymmetry for the assignment (I found plenty of examples in the screenshots), and asked for at least some changes in level; but I also asked them to think about using things we couldn’t ordinarily do in person – such as proximity to the camera, or reaching body parts across screens – to make their shapes interesting.  Some of the groups did some excellent work for their second-ever choreography project!

More catching up – a whole semester (plus) of distance learning

 So, as we came back to school for a semester of distance learning (now into the second semester, but that’s another story), our leadership team decided to switch to a 4x3 schedule: instead of having seven classes at once, students would take four classes (whichever were the odd-numbered classes in their schedules) in the fall, and then three (the even-numbered ones) in the spring. The reasoning behind this was that last spring, in our emergency-distance-learning mode, many students (including the multiple-AP class, straight-A students) felt completely overwhelmed dealing with seven classes at once online; and with students completing their classes in one semester, them moving on to another set of classes, it made it more like a college schedule where classes always finish in one semester.

So the 4x3 schedule made perfect sense… The only problem was that under our daily class schedule we saw each class for 55 minutes four times a week (every day but Friday, which was set aside for catching up on homework) – so the total hours we were with each class was about equal to the hours we would ordinarily be with them in a regular semester, while we were expected to cover the curriculum for a whole year.

So that meant narrowing down my curriculum to the absolute essentials… which actually became an interesting exercise in refining my usual plans to make them as meaningful as possible – always a good practice! I think the process helped me think a bit more clearly and make changes that I will want to keep when we are able to return in person.

For the Jazz 1 and Jazz 2 classes, I was able to cover two or three major dance forms each quarter, and two creative work units / choreography projects each quarter. I had always been somewhat dissatisfied with our district’s designation of our main college-prep dance classes as “Jazz Dance 1” and “Jazz Dance 2” – I always had to assure potential students that “we do so much more than just jazz dance”… But after reading many articles on anti-racist dance teaching in the wake of the summer of Black Lives Matter protests, I embraced our jazz dance focus in a whole new way. I was inspired by Amy Compton’s work on introducing her class to jazz dance during shelter-in-place (with lots of really excellent links!), and also a number of articles from the Journal of Dance Education on anti-racist dance teaching… I had already taught jazz as an African-derived dance form, going back to learn traditional jazz dances of the Harlem Renaissance after starting with really basic steps in the beginning of the year; so this year, I just tweaked the curriculum a bit to make the message clearer. I started with showing a couple of videos on the history of jazz and the history of African-American social dances (that one is from a TED-ed presentation by Camille Brown, and is dynamite!) to visually show the connections, then proceeded from there, always continuing the message that jazz came from the Black community.

So for the fall semester, both Jazz 1 and Jazz 2 began with jazz as their first technical unit, then Jazz 1 took on traditional jazz in the form of Big Apple and a bit of Charleston, while Jazz 2 moved on to complete a lyrical jazz combination. In the second quarter (this year’s equivalent of spring semester), Jazz 1 was able to experience Congolese/Central African dance, Baile Folklórico, and Hawai’ian hula; will Jazz 2 studied African-Haitian dance, Brazilian Samba, and Hawai’ian hula. Of course, there was only so much we could all do, through the computer screen and in smallish spaces, but I was actually amazed at how well many of the students were able to absorb such distinct and varied styles! We also managed creative work and choreography projects, but I think perhaps that is a subject for another post… as is what the Dance Production class did this year.

Catching up on a year of distance learning…

 Well, it has been over a year since I last posted here again – life got too hectic once we got into performance season… then shortly after, all you-know-what broke loose as we were sent home to shelter-in-place from the COVID pandemic in March. Now that it’s been nearly a year of distance learning, I am starting to dig out from under a couple of hectic and stressful semesters, and would like to catch up – so here goes…

When I left off, my wonderful Dance Production class was working on their dance about “othering.” Suffice it to say that we had a lot of zig-zags on the road to finishing that one (many of them around finding just the right music for each section that we could all get along with), but it did get finished beautifully. The class ended up performing it for the CDEA dance festival in February, and was two days away from performing it again for our district dance festival in March when the district cancelled all performances due to the pandemic… and so it started.

The rest of spring semester was definitely a scramble. I still managed to teach dance forms for my Dance 1 and Dance 2 classes – the saving grace being that what we had yet to work on was mostly Hawai’ian hula and Tahitian ‘ori, both  of which are uniquely suited to performing in small spaces (steps in Hawai’ian and Tahitian are supposed to be very small, since the whole point of taking steps is to shift weight to initiate hip movement, not to do any significant traveling). Final choreography projects were all done as solos, as we didn’t have time to figure out how to make group choreography projects work – the Dance 1 narrative final was replaced with working to poetry; and for Dance 2 we pivoted to working with objects, so that they could use something in their households as the impetus for their dances.

Dance Production had been set to perform not only their “othering” piece, but also a Hawai’ian hula we had been working on to premiere at the multicultural rally that usually happens at the end of March; then they were to have started work on their own choreography projects, already fully planned and cast. Plans went out the window as we turned to creating solo and duet projects that could be created and recorded at home – the instructions were to create a site-specific dance for recording on video, focusing on a meaningful topic. Nearly all of the dancers came through with solos (and one duet) for a virtual concert (a simple video playlist) – after all the confusion of the emergency shelter-in-place, it was lovely and moving to see their individual dances, created in their own homes and backyards...

For the full-class repertory, we continued rehearsing the hula until it was perfected enough to record with a performance on Zoom – the final performance was far from perfect, of course, since no one is ever “in sync” on Zoom due to differing wi-fi speeds, but it was still a lovely performance. We also added something that I had heard about from other dance teachers,  a class “chain dance” or “exquisite corps” by analogy with the Surrealist “exquisite corpse” parlor game in which each artist adds to a drawing or poem without seeing what came before. The way the dance version works is that we established a random order, then each dancer would create a very short (8 - 10 seconds) solo, and send the recording to the next dancer on the list; the next dancer would then start their solo from the same movement as their predecessor’s ending. It took a lot of nagging to get all of the dancers to finish their segments in time – with students used to keeping track of due dates and finishing assignments just in time, it’s hard to get across the message that if everyone took five days to finish their part and send it to the next dancer, it would take months to get the entire dance done! – but they finally did finish, and it made a beautiful opening for the virtual concert, as it briefly introduced each dancer in the class in turn by name before they showed their individual projects.

“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!

new dilemma - student choreography and inappropriate movement

I guess this has turned into an occasional blog — since I'm not exactly a prolific writer, I'll most likely continue writing whenever issues raise their heads (instead of daily/weekly/monthly...). So — I came upon a situation this past semester that was a new dilemma for me, after all these years, and I am still wondering how I could have handled it better, and how I can tweak my class projects in order to head off anything similar in the future...

In the past, at EOSA, I had given my Dance Production students very specific assignments for their final choreography projects for the spring concert (one year it was dance in the style of a dance ancestor, another was dance as a response to history or social issues, another was dance responding to words or text, etc.). This year, for my first Dance Production class at my new school, I reverted to the more open-ended system of my student-teaching mentor — each semester we had an "idea day" in which students presented their dance ideas to the class; then dancers signed up for dances they most wanted to perform, choreographers gave me lists of their needs for dancers, and I set casting accordingly.

This worked beautifully in the fall concert, with 11 choreographers presenting interesting pieces in widely varied styles. In the spring, we again had some intriguing ideas presented; but I also noticed a lot of choreographers talking more about the popular music they wanted to dance to than the dance itself. Of more concern were various references to "hardcore popping" or "burlesque-style" dance, as well as some of songs that were fairly offensive (in which bouncing, jiggling, and showing off your booty is the entire point) — the tone of the day felt to me as if some choreographers were competing for dancers by using popular and sexualized songs and movement. So I reconnoitered, told the choreographers to come back in a week with a written proposal including what they intended to communicate to the audience, and tried it again. The second idea day went better — most choreographers came back with complete proposals, with more well-thought-out movement ideas and nothing overtly unacceptable at least.

As we moved into rehearsals and in-progress showings, I could see there were still a couple of dances (or parts of dances) that made me uncomfortable as a director. The first was pretty simple: in a group dance about love, the very first movement looked to me like stereotypical "stripper dance" — dancers squatting on their heels opened their knees sharply in unison before slithering to standing level (a movement which undoubtedly appears in countless music videos, but in context seemed very suggestive). I talked to the choreographer about what she intended to convey to her audience, how the opening movement sets the tone for the whole dance, and that at least parts of her audience were likely to see her beginning as an allusion to striptease. She agreed that it might not be the most appropriate opening, and changed it so that each dancer (still in unison) sharply made his or her own dramatic, low-level shape — which turned out to be a much more interesting opening in any case.

The second instance was more difficult. This choreographer had originally proposed one of those "shake your body" songs; for her second proposal she changed to "Flawless" by Beyoncé. Ironically — given that the song includes a talk by the writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on the importance of feminism, specifically deploring girls in our culture competing for the attention of men — her dance seemed to be permeated with subtly (or sometimes overtly) sexualized movement. After the first showings I asked her to tone down some parts of the dance, which she did (though reluctantly); but it remained problematic for me —not blatantly inappropriate enough to take it out of the concert, but still not what I wanted to showcase in my dance program.

The heart of my dilemma is that this choreographer's intention was to create a dance about "empowering women to love their own bodies" (as her dancers agreed). I think these young women genuinely believe they are conveying women's empowerment by performing movement that looks to me very reminiscent of striptease. I know this style of movement is very much a part of pop culture through music videos, and that burlesque and even pole-dancing are now popular recreational dance classes; yet I also know, in a historical context, how much this is still a product of a male-dominated culture in which women are objectified as sex objects. What I have been asking myself is: how do I expand my students' focus (or raise their consciousness, as we used to say) to understand how these movements they are drawn to are objectifying, decidedly un-empowering, and borderline offensive for some of us, without coming off sounding like an anti-sex prude? I worry that I am simply being too sensitive — but I do not want my (nearly all female) students learning to demean and objectify women, however inadvertently.

This, again, is a new problem for me — at my previous school, every student in my (small) Dance Production classes presented their choreography finals on stage, and somehow I never had to deal with movement I considered inappropriate.... So I wonder — has the culture changed that much? Is it something in the culture of this particular school? And how do I adjust my class to prevent the problem in the future — going back to specific assignments? Requiring instrumental music only? (both of which I am definitely toying with.) Or perhaps some readings in classic feminist literature...? Or do I just frankly talk to the new class about how sexualized movement objectifies women? I hope that these are just growing pains of a new program and that we will get over it as our culture of dance develops, but I do feel a need to address it proactively as the new school year starts.