The past few weeks have been a whirl – preparing for a major field trip and a dance festival as well as choreographing for the school musical (more about all of those later) – which is why I have not had a lot of time to write lately… so I will have to catch up and write in retrospect!
So, over the last few weeks…
We first did a short unit on Baile Folklórico, specifically the dance La Botella from Michoacán. I learned this one at EOSA (my previous dance program) when we had a guest specialist in Folklórico. It’s a good dance for a barefoot dance floor, since the dances from Michoacán are done in bare feet, and it is fun to learn – students generally get a kick out of the “borracho” step, since the Spanish-speakers (many, in my classes) get to explain to everyone else that it means “drunk.” Of course then I have to explain to everyone that it is called that because it tilts from side to side, not because of anything else that might happen in the course of the dance!
Next we worked on Central African / Congolese – another dance form I had learned from an expert from Dimensions Dance Theater who guest-taught my classes at EOSA for a number of years. The rhythm I usually start the beginners on is called Zebola, which is a healing dance and involves a call-and-response chant at the beginning – always a good way to introduce call-and-response form.
Both of these dances I introduce with the standard disclaimer – “I am not truly an expert in this form, but I have learned this dance from someone who is, and I would like to share it with you" — in the spirit of that perennial question of how expert does one really need to be to authoritatively teach a dance form... My default position is that I don't feel truly comfortable as an authority unless and until I have studied and performed a form for years if not decades — so the disclaimer is helpful for me, to be able to share forms that I think my students would enjoy at least a taste of.
Thursday, May 7, 2015
Sunday, April 12, 2015
multicultural rally
We had our second in-front-of-the-whole-school performance last Friday at the multicultural rally. This seems to be a tradition at a few of the high schools in the district, where once a year the school gets together to celebrate the multitude of different cultures on campus — at least as much as possible in a one-hour assembly. this one featured a multicultural fashion show, organized by the French Club: girls (yes, they were all girls) in traditional dress of their own or their parents' homelands (we do have a lot of 1st- and 2nd-generation immigrants) — from Persia, Punjab, Pakistan, Liberia, Laos, and the Philippines to Guatemala, El Salvador, Jamaica and Brazil... It also featured dances from the Polynesian Club as well as the dance classes.
Since I knew the Polynesian Club would be performing, I had hoped that my students might choose to perform Samba for some variety and wider cultural representation (and we do have a relatively large pocket of Brazilian-Americans on campus, who might have been pleased to see their national dance represented). But the overwhelming consensus among the student performers was for kahiko (ancient) hula — Kilauea — and the Tahitian dance Papio; and since those were the two dances that were relatively simple and the students were already confident with, it did make sense. We had 39 dancers opt to perform (our biggest group yet), most in both dances. We rehearsed exclusively during class time, within each class, but managed to pull all performers together just once, the day before the rally (this will all be easier next year when we have one specific performing class working together every day). They all remembered their places and danced very well — these students were again a pleasure to work with!
Since I knew the Polynesian Club would be performing, I had hoped that my students might choose to perform Samba for some variety and wider cultural representation (and we do have a relatively large pocket of Brazilian-Americans on campus, who might have been pleased to see their national dance represented). But the overwhelming consensus among the student performers was for kahiko (ancient) hula — Kilauea — and the Tahitian dance Papio; and since those were the two dances that were relatively simple and the students were already confident with, it did make sense. We had 39 dancers opt to perform (our biggest group yet), most in both dances. We rehearsed exclusively during class time, within each class, but managed to pull all performers together just once, the day before the rally (this will all be easier next year when we have one specific performing class working together every day). They all remembered their places and danced very well — these students were again a pleasure to work with!
Tuesday, April 7, 2015
class dance project
Wow — things have gotten very busy and I haven't posted in over a month! I guess I have a bit of catching up to do...
Since completing our brief Polynesian unit with a bit of Tahitian, I gave the classes a short choreography project to create a phrase for a class dance. This is an assignment I had only given a couple of times before, and which I was a little hesitant about, as it doesn't reinforce any specific dance elements — but it does give the students a chance to create the phrases they've wanted to create since the beginning of the year (and, as I have to admit, perhaps help to get them hooked on the idea of taking Dance again next year). The idea is very simple: create a short dance phrase (24 - 32 musical beats) that you would like to teach to your classmates, which we will then combine into a class dance. The only real requirement was that the movements be the students' own creation (no direct-from-video choreography please!).
A few interesting things came up in this one for me... One was that, as I watched groups working on their steps, I noticed an awful lot of dependence on song lyrics for movement ideas — things like the ubiquitous gesture for “call me” (thumb and pinkie stretched from ear to jaw), what I think of as “Mickey Mouse-ing” the song (of course, could have headed this off by requiring instrumental music again, but part of the impetus for this project was to let the kids work with the music and movements they’ve wanted to work on all along). One of my thoughts on this was that we had just recently learned Hawai’ian dance, in which the gestures explicitly illustrate the words of the song, and I wondered how their movements might have differed had we done this at another time; but I think in some respects this way of thinking about songs and gestures is so natural for them it may not have made a difference.
Ironically (given how hesitant I was about the assignment to begin with), this turned out to be one of our more successful choreography projects. Everyone participated, and all groups successfully taught their phrases to the class — some with their own spokesperson, some using me to transmit their steps using “loud teacher talk”... Students were eager to learn from each other, and although they did tend to be more talkative and less focused when their peers were teaching than they usually are with me, they were invariably supportive and enthusiastic about their classmates’ work — and picked it up very quickly, to boot. With a good mix of styles, tempos and energies, each class now has one more dance to add to their repertoire for the end of the year.
Before leaving for spring break, I assigned a journal reflection on the project — How did you feel about teaching your movement to the class? Did the knowledge that you would be teaching your steps change your creative process? What was hardest for you in this? How did you feel about learning movement from your classmates? Which group surprised you, and why or how? The responses were overwhelmingly positive — many students said they thought they would be too scared to teach, but they gained confidence and pride as they saw their peers learning their movement... I had originally thought of this as a project just for the first year of the program (essentially to give each class that one more repertoire piece for the end-of-the-year concert); but after seeing what a confidence-builder it became, I think I may need to bring it back in future years — perhaps with just a few tweaks to get them over that song-lyric rut!
Since completing our brief Polynesian unit with a bit of Tahitian, I gave the classes a short choreography project to create a phrase for a class dance. This is an assignment I had only given a couple of times before, and which I was a little hesitant about, as it doesn't reinforce any specific dance elements — but it does give the students a chance to create the phrases they've wanted to create since the beginning of the year (and, as I have to admit, perhaps help to get them hooked on the idea of taking Dance again next year). The idea is very simple: create a short dance phrase (24 - 32 musical beats) that you would like to teach to your classmates, which we will then combine into a class dance. The only real requirement was that the movements be the students' own creation (no direct-from-video choreography please!).
A few interesting things came up in this one for me... One was that, as I watched groups working on their steps, I noticed an awful lot of dependence on song lyrics for movement ideas — things like the ubiquitous gesture for “call me” (thumb and pinkie stretched from ear to jaw), what I think of as “Mickey Mouse-ing” the song (of course, could have headed this off by requiring instrumental music again, but part of the impetus for this project was to let the kids work with the music and movements they’ve wanted to work on all along). One of my thoughts on this was that we had just recently learned Hawai’ian dance, in which the gestures explicitly illustrate the words of the song, and I wondered how their movements might have differed had we done this at another time; but I think in some respects this way of thinking about songs and gestures is so natural for them it may not have made a difference.
Ironically (given how hesitant I was about the assignment to begin with), this turned out to be one of our more successful choreography projects. Everyone participated, and all groups successfully taught their phrases to the class — some with their own spokesperson, some using me to transmit their steps using “loud teacher talk”... Students were eager to learn from each other, and although they did tend to be more talkative and less focused when their peers were teaching than they usually are with me, they were invariably supportive and enthusiastic about their classmates’ work — and picked it up very quickly, to boot. With a good mix of styles, tempos and energies, each class now has one more dance to add to their repertoire for the end of the year.
Before leaving for spring break, I assigned a journal reflection on the project — How did you feel about teaching your movement to the class? Did the knowledge that you would be teaching your steps change your creative process? What was hardest for you in this? How did you feel about learning movement from your classmates? Which group surprised you, and why or how? The responses were overwhelmingly positive — many students said they thought they would be too scared to teach, but they gained confidence and pride as they saw their peers learning their movement... I had originally thought of this as a project just for the first year of the program (essentially to give each class that one more repertoire piece for the end-of-the-year concert); but after seeing what a confidence-builder it became, I think I may need to bring it back in future years — perhaps with just a few tweaks to get them over that song-lyric rut!
Wednesday, March 4, 2015
hula responses
Yesterday we watched a video selection on the culture and history of kahiko hula (a short segment from the immensely useful PBS series "Dancing"). Afterwards I asked students to write in their journals some observations, and to think especially about how what they have seen, heard, and learned over the past week and a half might change how they think about Hawai’ian dance. Here are a few things they said:
“I always thought Hawai’ian dance was just for fun but it’s so much more than that. It tells a story about Hawai’I and their culture.”
“I always thought hula was just dancing with your hips to beats. I never knew it told a story.”
“Before, I had thought that hula was a new, modern dance – I didn’t know it had been a dance form for years.”
“While they’re dancing, they sing the song, they do it powerfully and they sing very loud. I had thought hula was silent and graceful. Now I know it is a part of their life and very important to them.”
“I understand more about why these dances are so sacred to their culture, and why the land is so precious to them.”
“It does surprise me how most of the dances are dedicated to nature. Maybe that is why Hawai’I is so clean and beautiful.”
“I saw the dancers dancing for the volcano, I heard that when the lava dries up it creates new land. I learned that kahiko hula has valuable meaning behind the dance steps, describing nature.”
“It was sad to hear that when the missionaries came, they forced the Hawai’ian culture out and made it seem like what they knew and what their ancestors knew and believed were all bad.”
“The speaker mentioned that foreigners would come to the island and try to change the culture – they were disrespecting the ancestors by doing that because it was saying they could go to hell with their culture. Cultural oppression.”
I feel fortunate to have so many students who are so engaged with our material...
“I always thought Hawai’ian dance was just for fun but it’s so much more than that. It tells a story about Hawai’I and their culture.”
“I always thought hula was just dancing with your hips to beats. I never knew it told a story.”
“Before, I had thought that hula was a new, modern dance – I didn’t know it had been a dance form for years.”
“While they’re dancing, they sing the song, they do it powerfully and they sing very loud. I had thought hula was silent and graceful. Now I know it is a part of their life and very important to them.”
“I understand more about why these dances are so sacred to their culture, and why the land is so precious to them.”
“It does surprise me how most of the dances are dedicated to nature. Maybe that is why Hawai’I is so clean and beautiful.”
“I saw the dancers dancing for the volcano, I heard that when the lava dries up it creates new land. I learned that kahiko hula has valuable meaning behind the dance steps, describing nature.”
“It was sad to hear that when the missionaries came, they forced the Hawai’ian culture out and made it seem like what they knew and what their ancestors knew and believed were all bad.”
“The speaker mentioned that foreigners would come to the island and try to change the culture – they were disrespecting the ancestors by doing that because it was saying they could go to hell with their culture. Cultural oppression.”
I feel fortunate to have so many students who are so engaged with our material...
Sunday, March 1, 2015
Hawai'ian hula
My classes are back from a week off for Presidents' Week (that's the official title — it's commonly known in wealthier districts as "ski week," but my students call it "sleep week"), and are continuing our spring semester trip around the world. This week we took up Hawai'ian hula — specifically 'auana (modern) hula, but we will be doing a kahiko (ancient, pre-European contact) dance next week as well.
Many of the world dance forms I teach — including Samba, Baile Folklorico, African-Haitian, and Congolese — are in the "I'm not an expert at this, but I have learned it and would like to share it with you" category... But hula is a little different: although I am still nothing like a true expert, I did perform with a halau for enough years to feel quite comfortable with the vocabulary (both physical and terminology) and to have a relatively large repertoire of dances to share.
I have a few students who have already studied various forms of Polynesian dance, at least one very seriously... When she walked into the studio Monday morning and saw the Hawai'ian vocabulary (kaholo, hela, ami, ka'o) on the board, her entire face lit up as she said "are we starting hula today?" It has been a pleasure all week to see how seriously most of my students take the form — in the first couple of days, many were already asking me if I would have vocabulary sheets to study! We did finish (though not perfect) one 'auana hula this week, Ka Uluwehi o ke kai ("the plants of the sea"); next week we will do a very short kahiko hula, Kilauea, before moving on to Tahitian.
On Thursday, we did a short reading on the history and culture of hula — just some bare-bones ideas about the pre- and post-contact eras, all that I can fit on one page — and I asked them to write in their journals something from the reading that surprised them, something they felt was significant, and something they were curious about. Again, I was gratified to see how many picked up on the concepts of hula being a form of communication and a way to hand down stories without written language, and how important hula is and has been to the indigenous culture of the islands (and how it was nearly destroyed when banned by the Europeans). I was also pleased to see the range of things students were curious about — why the songs talk about nature so much; whether the people still secretly danced while hula was banned; and "why did the queen get overthrown?" We already had some good discussions, I anticipate more when we see some video clips next week.
Many of the world dance forms I teach — including Samba, Baile Folklorico, African-Haitian, and Congolese — are in the "I'm not an expert at this, but I have learned it and would like to share it with you" category... But hula is a little different: although I am still nothing like a true expert, I did perform with a halau for enough years to feel quite comfortable with the vocabulary (both physical and terminology) and to have a relatively large repertoire of dances to share.
I have a few students who have already studied various forms of Polynesian dance, at least one very seriously... When she walked into the studio Monday morning and saw the Hawai'ian vocabulary (kaholo, hela, ami, ka'o) on the board, her entire face lit up as she said "are we starting hula today?" It has been a pleasure all week to see how seriously most of my students take the form — in the first couple of days, many were already asking me if I would have vocabulary sheets to study! We did finish (though not perfect) one 'auana hula this week, Ka Uluwehi o ke kai ("the plants of the sea"); next week we will do a very short kahiko hula, Kilauea, before moving on to Tahitian.
On Thursday, we did a short reading on the history and culture of hula — just some bare-bones ideas about the pre- and post-contact eras, all that I can fit on one page — and I asked them to write in their journals something from the reading that surprised them, something they felt was significant, and something they were curious about. Again, I was gratified to see how many picked up on the concepts of hula being a form of communication and a way to hand down stories without written language, and how important hula is and has been to the indigenous culture of the islands (and how it was nearly destroyed when banned by the Europeans). I was also pleased to see the range of things students were curious about — why the songs talk about nature so much; whether the people still secretly danced while hula was banned; and "why did the queen get overthrown?" We already had some good discussions, I anticipate more when we see some video clips next week.
Tuesday, February 17, 2015
performing Lindy hop for the whole school!
While working on Samba we also continued to run the Lindy hop / Big Apple piece once per class, as eight pairs of dancers had signed up to perform it at a rally in front of the entire school (our first official performance, since the Thriller flash mob was more of a... well, a flash mob)! The rally happened last Friday in the gym, and the dancers did very well — great energy, even after a false start due to technical difficulties with the sound system. They were well-received with cheers from the audience, and afterward many teachers told me how glad they were to see dance return to our school. All-in-all a success for our first full-school performance!
Spring semester and world dance
After introducing dance technique with jazz and historical social dances in the fall, my spring semester in Beginning Dance usually focuses on various world dance forms (along with creative work and choreography, of course). This progression has worked well for me for years, as teens are hungry to learn new dance forms, and it is important to me to validate non-Western dance forms. I have usually taught some African-Haitian or Congolese, Baile Folklórico, Brazilian Samba, Polynesian (Hawai'ian hula and Tahitian 'ori), and ballet, which I do present as a world dance form (European classical dance). Of course, I am not an expert in all of these forms, but I introduce them as dance forms I have learned and would like to share.
This year, I polled the students on which forms they are most interested in, to prioritize in case we don't have time for everything, and three styles overwhelmingly stood out: Brazilian Samba, Hawai'ian hula, and ballet (that last one actually surprised me a bit... but ballet is still ubiquitous in popular culture as the epitome of concert dance, so perhaps it is natural that students would be curious to learn it). We began with Samba — since Brazilian Carnaval happens mid-February, the beginning of the month is the perfect time to learn it. I explain to my students that there are many styles of Samba, but the style I learned is the traditional folkloric style, with a flat-footed basic step (I learned from Conceição Damasceno of the World Dance Center in Berkeley); I add steps I have learned from colleagues who dance with various Samba companies in the bay area as well.
Naturally we also learn some of the history and culture of Samba, and the responses to the reading handout have been interesting — many students hadn't realized that Samba was an African-diaspora dance form. Our time working on Samba has been joyful, as students have responded to this energetic and exuberant dance (not to mention the intense music)!
This year, I polled the students on which forms they are most interested in, to prioritize in case we don't have time for everything, and three styles overwhelmingly stood out: Brazilian Samba, Hawai'ian hula, and ballet (that last one actually surprised me a bit... but ballet is still ubiquitous in popular culture as the epitome of concert dance, so perhaps it is natural that students would be curious to learn it). We began with Samba — since Brazilian Carnaval happens mid-February, the beginning of the month is the perfect time to learn it. I explain to my students that there are many styles of Samba, but the style I learned is the traditional folkloric style, with a flat-footed basic step (I learned from Conceição Damasceno of the World Dance Center in Berkeley); I add steps I have learned from colleagues who dance with various Samba companies in the bay area as well.
Naturally we also learn some of the history and culture of Samba, and the responses to the reading handout have been interesting — many students hadn't realized that Samba was an African-diaspora dance form. Our time working on Samba has been joyful, as students have responded to this energetic and exuberant dance (not to mention the intense music)!
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