Nothing as Dear as Life

 Distance learning or no distance learning, I was determined my Dance Production class would create a dance together this fall, as they did last year…

When we came back to school, I first told them their semester would have two main focal points: the first was “screendance,” or dance-for-video (for obvious reasons – there was not a chance that we would be able to perform in person this semester) – I mentioned that dance-for-screen is truly how our art form is evolving these days, all over the world, and our task is to show that we can still do meaningful work even if we can’t get on a stage…

… And the second, of course, was dance responding to meaningful issues – I quoted Nina Simone that “an artist’s duty is to reflect the times” and said that dance can be a part of changing the world, whether we dance for resistance or uplift. I told them that we usually create a dance together on some issue, and that last year we went through a long process of consensus-building to get to an issue everyone agreed on – but that this year, it seemed imperative that we needed to respond to the #BLM movement.... and they all were completely on board with that (not a surprise, actually, knowing these students and how focused they can be on social justice issues).

So from there, my role was mainly to help them organize their ideas – I got them into breakout rooms to talk about ideas for the general shape of the dance, out of which came the general consensus that it should start with solos (some said “like our chain dance from last year) then grow through small groups to end with the whole class dancing together in unity, as well as the idea of using quotes by civil rights activists to lead off each section.

I then took lots of suggestions for music and title ideas, and narrowed them down through multiple polls. We narrowed down the music choices for solos (or duets, for those who wanted to work in a pair) to three, and each dancer or pair of dancers chose their music and which name they would honor. I asked who was up for choreographing the small-group sections, and six dancers stepped up, serendipitously all seniors.

For the ending section with everyone, I asked the four seniors who were veterans of last year's class to choreograph (that was one of my only real inputs in the process). My role from there was setting the small groups (three of them, two choreographers each) and facilitating the rehearsals. The small groups naturally happened in breakout rooms, with many of the choreographers sending their dancers videos to practice with outside of class; for the full-class rehearsals,  facilitating on Zoom meant a lot of watching everyone and checking to see if they all understood which foot and hand the choreographer was using, since some screens come out reversed and things can be really confusing! And of course, once rehearsals were done, I spent a lot of time nagging kids to get their videos to me for editing (they all had three to turn in: one solo or duet, one small-group section, and one for the final, full-class coda), and editing them all together (this was by far the most complex video-editing project I had ever done!).

The piece came out to over ten minutes long, and was beautiful in the variety and passion of their dancing… My one and only choreographic input was the very end – after the choreographer of the very last section ended the whole dance with a long slow movement, reaching toward the camera, I thought it would be nice to bring in the photos of those they honored, one by one… I proposed that to the class, they liked the idea so we went with it – otherwise, as usual, the dance was entirely theirs, I functioned only as facilitator and video editor.

I was incredibly proud of what they did – the dance was powerful, and reminded me more of my class at EOSA, who created their dance on youth killings in Oakland all those years ago, than any other class I have taught since…  and I hope that this experience creating such a serious and socially relevant dance (even virtually) may stand us in good stead for next year’s class and beyond. 

more choreography projects on Zoom

 We only had time for four choreography projects for the Jazz 1 (Beginning dance) class, owing to the 4x3 schedule and having to condense the entire year’s curriculum into one semester. For the third project I wanted to give them a version of the project that is usually our fall semester final – contrasts in tempo, level, and size/range. I usually introduce this one with a quote from Doris Humphrey about staying away from “the deadly middle.” In this situation, I figured that three elements in one project was really too much for Zoom, so I concentrated on the two that we hadn’t already covered (tempo and size/range). Unfortunately, even the two different elements made life too complicated for our distance learning world, as this was our least successful project – only a few groups truly showed what I would consider real contrasts or opposites in both tempo and  size… perhaps showing real size contrasts is just too much for small spaces! So this is the only project I plan to change for my 4th-period Jazz 1 class, which meets during the spring semester – I think I will revert to the simple tempo variations project which is usually the lead-up to the contrasts final when we are in person.

Difficult third project notwithstanding, I was not about to let go of our usual year-end final: narrative form. This one is important to me, as it really helps set the students up for the idea that creating dances is not just about creating interesting steps, but is also a form of communication… I set this one up the usual way, with a video observation of a few short narrative dances or excerpts: a large chunk of Paul Taylor’s Snow White, the final crypt scene from Romeo and Juliet (I have the ABT version, with Natalia Makarova), and the “Rosa Parks” section of Gordon Parks’ Martin. Then I just set them in groups (in this case, in breakout rooms) with the instructions that they are to use movement only to tell a story – whether a famous story that we all know (like Snow White or Romeo and Juliet), something from history (like Rosa Parks), something from their own lives, or something they make up. I remind them that a real story has a beginning, a middle, and an end, and something has to actually happen – but beyond that they are free to create whatever story they would like.

Of course, the added difficulty this year is that it is so much harder to tell a story when none of the dancers are in the same place… But some of the groups came up with very creative solutions to the problem of narrative on Zoom! One duet used a bear costume
and multiple virtual screens to dance Goldilocks and the three bears. Another pair created a story about a girl drowning in the ocean and getting saved, and managed to throw the life-preserver (actually a big round pillow that they both had in their houses) from one screen to the next. And a quartet used extensive (and well-planned) video editing to tell the story of Cinderella – my favorite part was how they took advantage of two of the dancers having similar staircases in their houses, so that Cinderella could lose her shoe in one scene and the prince could find a shoe on (what appeared to be) the same staircase in the next scene! There was much creativity all around, and I was so happy that they finished the semester this way!

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!