Dance Project
Jim Hatch Jay Arnold Jon Clough Brian Seibert
Justification:
Dear Parents/Guardians,
Over the next couple of weeks myself and the students will begin a unit focused on dance. This will be a great way to introduce our students to the many benefits dance has to offer. Dance is a great way for students and people of all ages to get and stay in shape. Dance is not only fun but has many positive health benefits. Some of these benefits include strengthening the cardiovascular system, increasing flexibility, and increasing muscular strength and endurance, all while giving one a sense of well-being.
Dance in its many forms is a good way to achieve a cardiovascular workout. Dance requires constant movement which leads to an elevated heart rate. Keeping the heart rate elevated for a significant amount of time is responsible for strengthening the heart and lowering blood pressure. This will not only keep the heart strong, but allow it to work more efficiently. This will lesson ones chance for heart disease, heart-attacks, and or strokes. Keeping the heart rate elevated through dance is also a great way to burn calories. This is a great way to keep students body weight at ideal levels and keeping Body Mass Index (BMI) in check. Students with ideal BMI are less likely to be obese, develop type 2 diabetes, coronary artery disease, have hypertension and experience heart failure.
Dance is also a good way to increase flexibility. Dance involves many body parts and muscle groups which rotate through various degrees and range of motion. Most forms of dance also require dancers to perform moves that require bending and stretching, so through the activity of dance alone, students will naturally become more flexible.
Dance also increases muscular strength and endurance. Dance builds strength by forcing the muscles to resist against a dancer’s own body weight. Some styles of dance even require jumping and leaping into the air which demands the legs to work very hard. This jumping, leaping, and constant movement while being on the feet will lead to increased leg strength. Since dance requires the students to be on their feet for long periods of time, this will increase muscular endurance. This increase in muscular endurance will allow students to be on their feet longer without tiring as easily.
Dance can also be a good social network for students. Having good social relationships and friends leads to high self-esteem levels, which can be essential for young students development. Dance and other physical activities also reduce stress and tension which leads to a better over all sense of well-being.
Dance is a great way for students to express themselves and their culture. Since dance is found in virtually every culture we hope that by administering a unit on dance we reach a diverse population of our students and allow them to feel proud of who they are and have an interest in participating. This shows that dance is a great way to reach a diverse population.
After completion of our unit on dance, students will demonstrate competency in motor skills and movement patterns. This will allow students to perform a variety of physical activities and dance. Students will also demonstrate understanding of movement concepts, principles, and strategies. This will allow students to learn dances and be able to perform them consistently. We also hope by introducing students to this up and coming unit on dance we will gear our students towards a lifetime of physical activity. Last but not least, we hope this unit on dance will make students value physical activity for health, enjoyment, challenge, self-expression, and social interaction.
Annotations
Annotated Bibliography
Martial arts and yoga help spark PE renaissance in schools (2009). Retrieved April 23, 2009, from Academic Search Premier (14637073).
“Martial Arts and Yoga Help Spark PE Renaissance in Schools” is a very brief article discussing what the future of physical education could be. Traditionally, PE classes have revolved around team invasion games that are said to build character and shape the individual. However, this article suggests that there is more to character building than playing on a team, and that is the incorporation of nontraditional activities in course curriculum. Mountain biking, martial arts, dance, and yoga are just a few of the suggested activities, but a whole world of leisure activities can be explored that are more willing to be used later in life than team sports.
Roy, S. (2009). Playing To The Gallery. Retrieved April 23, 2009, from EBSCO (13647431).
The author of this article uses details from the life of Siobhan Davies to preach the collaboration of art and dance. Davies was a contemporary art student who specialized in creative dance and would go on to become a successful British choreographer. The article reads as a story as Roy describes the dancers and many wonderful locations of which Davies has been associated.
Smith, J. (2007). Drawing Connections: Developing an Integrated Dance Curriculum. Retrieved April 23, 2009, from Academic Search Premier (15411796).
This lengthy article tells of Smith’s take on creating a curriculum for teaching dance both in and out of physical education. The article ranges from discussing approaches to assessment to how to operate the class. Rather than grade on dance ability and participation, Smith suggests allowing research projects to create a better understanding of dance and its impact.
Wozny, N. (n.d.). Nichol's Creative Arts Curriculum. Retrieved April 23, 2009, from Academic
Search Premier (00116009).
The Nichol’s School is offering an eight week dance course that teaches the basics of dance movements and history. Dance is not a traditional course offered to high school students, but those that enjoy the content are then able to enroll in other dance electives. The initial course is all part of the plan for this particular school’s, “Introduction to the Arts”.
Roy, S. (2009). Playing To The Gallery. Retrieved April 23, 2009, from EBSCO (13647431).
Playing To The Gallery
In 1967, a young art student called Siobhan Davies went along to some classes in contemporary dance. At the time, modern dance had just begun to take root in the country, seeded largely by American influences – both established choreographers such as Martha Graham and newer experimental trends such as the interdisciplinary Judson Dance Theatre. In Britain, with no established modern dance scene to speak of, this meant that the “mainstream” and “fringe” started out together, and often comprised the same people.
So it was with Davies, who still remembers the creative buzz of the time. She quickly became an acclaimed dancer and choreographer, working in both the growing mainstream and the smaller-scale independent sector. She founded her own company in 1988 and continues to be a pre-eminent choreographer in British contemporary dance, a scene that is far bigger, more plural and more professionalised than it was four decades ago.
Recently, she seems to have been undergoing one of her periodic phases of self-questioning. Since 2002 she has moved her work off the regular theatre circuit, and last year she hosted a series of talks by visual artists, looking at the crossovers between dance and visual art. Those talks left me baffled – do all visual artists speak as if they were in a postgraduate seminar? – but I did get the sense that Davies was hankering for
some of that creative spark of her early years, and to match it to her accumulated experience.
Thankfully, talk was followed by action. This year’s project, “The Collection”, hosted jointly at the Siobhan Davies Studios and the Victoria Miro Gallery, is an exhibition themed on the connections (sometimes tenuous) between dance and visual arts. At Davies’s studios, Conrad Shawcross’s line drawings – a kind of arrested motion, like traces left by sound waves – are a preliminary to his Slow Arc Inside a Cube III, a moving bulb inside a wire cage that casts a shifting mesh of light across the room. It is momentarily striking, but ultimately less engaging than the marvelous building itself (by the architect Sarah Wigglesworth).
It might have worked better in the context of the larger part of “The Collection”, at the Victoria Miro Gallery (another fine building). The most sensual pieces here are both by Yayoi Kusama. In the surreally enchanting Narcissus Garden, a mass of metallic spheres floats on the canal, tinkling as they herd or drift according to currents of water or wind. Gleaming Lights of the Souls is a Tardis-like cubicle inside which coloured light bulbs are reflected to infinity by mirrors and water, so that you feel suspended in some inner cosmos.
Upstairs, the dancer Sarah Warsop features in Lying in Wait, a video collaboration with Idris Khan. On a triptych of screens, Warsop appears as a stern, monochrome figure in a library,her image flickering like riffled
pages. Downstairs, Alex Hartley’s Come Into My Sleep splices sequences from classic films, showing the body in vertiginous or claustrophobic extremes: men (mostly) scaling the sides of buildings, crawling through tunnels, diving down shafts. It is wildly gripping, like an endless series of cliffhangers. Sarah Sze’s Notes on Circumstance – an artful little composition of clutter, like a messy desk that’s been rearranged by elves while you were out – is engrossing in a way that Roman Signer’s banal Table With Ventilator (the title says it all) really is not.
The centrepiece, for dancegoers and gallery spectators alike, is Davies’s Minutes, which juxtaposes three living “exhibits” in the upper gallery over an hourly cycle, with Davies herself seated like a gallery attendant, counting off the minutes. Deborah Saxon and Henry Montes form one unit, a couple involved in little games of lead and follow, mirror and interrupt, lean and tug. Catherine Bennett and Matteo Fargion are another unit, singing a series of word scrabbles – phrases such as “She’s dancing”, “Is this working?” and “Oh no, fuck, no” chopped into units and recombined into fiendish rhythms, to which the couple also move. Finally there is
Matthias Sperling, an unsettled, solitary figure accompanied only by his metronome, who breathes and sighs, hands occasionally flicking or fingers snapping as if batting away flies. I saw these as three choreographic registers – one communicative/behavioural, one formal/compositional, one interior or reflexive. It’s much
more theatrical than most visual art, but also more object-like than most choreography. It certainly takes Davies away from the main currents of British contemporary dance into fresh territory; time will tell whether this new step will open a new path for her – but if she wanted to shift the ground beneath her feet, this does it.
Martial arts and yoga help spark PE renaissance in schools (2009). Retrieved April 23, 2009, from Academic Search Premier (14637073).
Martial arts and yoga help spark PE renaissance in schools
Pupils are discovering a new enthusiasm for physical education, thanks to a range of exciting activities such as mountain biking, dance, martial arts, and yoga, according to a report from Ofsted. Inspectors witnessed pupils taking part in a wider range of activities than previously associated with the subject, and found that creative approaches to PE not only encouraged pupils not keen on traditional team activities, but also reduced disaffection and improved engagement. Pupils’ achievement was good or outstanding in two thirds of the primary schools and over three quarters of the secondary schools visited.
Wozny, N. (n.d.). Nichol's Creative Arts Curriculum. Retrieved April 23, 2009, from Academic Search Premier (00116009).
NICHOLS' CREATIVE ARTS CURRICULUM
Entry into dance at the Nichols School is with "Introduction to the Arts." The eight-week class required of all Upper School students covers beginning dance technique and basic concepts, such as weight, line, flow, and time.
Those who are interested can continue taking dance electives all the way through their senior year. As freshmen, they go beyond plies to short compositional studies. "I want them to experience their body as an aesthetic tool and to expose them to basic compositional principles that are shared," says dance department head, Elaine Gardner.
Sophomores are exposed to the works and techniques of Doris Humphrey, Martha Graham, and Merce Cunningham in "Classic Modern Dance." "This class supports how modern dance is truly an American form based on the voice of the individual," says Gardner. During the second semester, Gardner leaves the west and introduces the students to world dance, where they learn yoga, a Chinese ribbon dance, and mudras from Indian classical dance. "My agenda here, besides broadening the awareness of non-Eurocentric work, is to show how spirit has been linked to the body in Africa, India, and Asia," she says.
As juniors and seniors, the students begin to flow between various artistic disciplines in "Study and Practice of Creativity." They experiment with writing and the visual arts and take advantage of Buffalo's cultural institutions, such as the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, the Burchfield-Penney Art Center, and Frank Lloyd Wright's Darwin D. Martin House. Gardner also introduces Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences. They view DVDs of work by Angelin Preljocaj, Maguy Marin, Mats Ek, Jifií Kylián, and Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker as compelling examples of strong European voices. "I set the stage for them to appreciate more experimental work," Gardner says. "This class is all about opening the door to more possibilities."
~~~~~~~~
By Nancy Wozny
Smith, J. (2007). Drawing Connections: Developing an Integrated Dance Curriculum. Retrieved April 23, 2009, from Academic Search Premier (15411796).
Drawing Connections:
Developing an Integrated
Dance Curriculum
ABSTRACT
The author argues
for a more holistic
approach to the
integration of
academic subjects in
college-level dance
curricula.
Preparing Students to Critique
An important first step in developing a holistic approach to teaching dance is to identify
the most important elements in the specific subareas of dance study—most commonly
divided into Dance Technique, Dance Theory, and Dance Practice. For this article I have
chosen to address at least one course in each of these areas to illustrate how I have
accomplished this task at Knox College, a small liberal arts college located in Galesburg,
Illinois. I have included curricular examples that will also help to explicate my overarching
philosophy of pedagogy.
When examining the curricular structure of any dance department it is useful to begin
with an analysis of the work covered in technique classes, as they are often the backbone
of a dance program. Like many other dance professors, when I first started teaching I
assigned my beginning modern dance students a paper that required them to attend a
dance performance and then write a critique of that particular performance. In recent
years, however, became aware of how little this assignment was actually benefiting my
students. While I agree that this is a successful way to get a student into a concert and to
demand a certain level of engagement with what is occurring on stage, I have found that
most beginning students are not prepared to write this type of paper. Furthermore, the
completion of this assignment does little to benefit the development of their technical
training.
The truth is that the majority of our students has never read a dance critique and do
not possess the vocabulary necessary to discuss a performance, nor do they draw connections
between what a dancer may be doing on stage and their own training in the technique
being performed. To write a successful dance critique one must have the ability to
discuss the basic elements of dance—Space, Time, and Energy—and be capable analyzing
how the choreographer and performers manipulate these elements. We often receive
dance critiques from our students that focus primarily on discussion of costuming or
lighting or are nothing more than the student’s interpretation of the dance’s storyline.
Andy Fitz
“The Space Between.”
This is not to suggest that such discussions aren’t sometimes useful, but when a student
does not have enough experience in analyzing movement, their written critique often
fails to actually address the nature of the dance composition. The end result is that students
begrudgingly write uninformed dance critiques and teachers suffer through reading
and grading them. The focus on technical training that has led to this failure to prepare
students to write about dance but such critiques do little to support a student’s technical
training. Requiring students to write a dance critique is a valid class exercise, but we
need to rethink how and when such work is done to maximize its effectiveness for our
students.
A better placement for this assignment might be in the required coursework of a
dance composition class. In most cases this is a course where students are being asked to
explore the dance elements of Space, Time, and Energy and how they can use these elements
to develop their own artistic voices. Dance Composition often covers how the
inclusion of the technical elements of sound, lighting, and costuming can help or hinder
the shape of a piece, all of which is usually experienced though review and critique of
individual movement studies. Class time is spent exploring ways to speak about the art
form and debate the merits of a choreographer’s artistic choices. In each class a student
is being exposed to the idea of analyzing dance. It makes sense academically to spend
time early in the term developing skills that will help students evaluate dance with a critical
eye. While you may lose actual “dance time” in class, the short time that is spent on
reading current dance reviews, discussing how professional critics evaluate dance, and
developing the vocabulary needed to intelligently discuss the art form will better prepare
students to attend and then write their own reviews of dance concerts. We will also be
teaching them what to look for when critiquing their own work, the work of their peers,
and that of professional choreographers. Finally, we will be providing our students with
the tools they need to possess to articulate their thoughts about the field of dance while
they are developing a sense of their own artistic process. With critiques being covered in
Dance Composition, we can go back to discussing modern dance technique and reevaluate
what assignments we are giving to our students there.
Dance Technique and Composition Curricula
First, let us look at the goal of a Dance Technique course. Regardless of the form of
dance being covered, be it ballet, jazz, or modern, the goal of a Dance Technique class is
for students to develop a certain level of physical and intellectual proficiency as they
learn how to move their body safely and efficiently through space. By assigning our students
some thoughtful, creative class projects, we will promote a better understanding of
these basic principles of dance training.
Most dance professors I have spoken to agree that one of the biggest obstacles to
overcome in teaching technique to beginning college students is the lack of body awareness
common in this age group and level. When I speak about body awareness I am
referring to students’ physical proficiency (e.g., their ability to physically perform a pivot
turn correctly) and, more important in my opinion, their understanding of how the
human body functions (e.g., the parts of the spine and how they come into proper alignment).
We live in a society where most people are detached from their own bodies and only
paying attention to them when they hurt. Just walk into any Walgreens store and you’ll
see how much shelf space is given over to painkillers versus preventative treatments. I
have started to give to my beginning students the following creative projects with the
goal of educating them about how the human body works and building their sense of
body awareness:
First, each student creates a life-sized body picture by having a friend trace him or her
out on a large piece of paper. The students are then asked to take this paper and, using
whatever kind of materials they like, “draw” their skeletal structure. Once this first part of
the assignment is complete, each student writes a reflective paper titled “Body
Structure/Body Choices.” This paper gives them a chance to understand the structure that
they have to work with in class and build an understanding of any true physical limitations
they may face (e.g., someone may have been born with a fused vertebra). Perhaps
more important, the student must analyze choices he or she makes every day, such as
how he or she sits at a computer or stands in class, and how students can make changes
in their body by correcting bad habits. This assignment has proven to be the proverbial
“light bulb going on” for many of my beginning dance students. Another creative and
equally effective assignment I have given technique students—a paper on body language—
requires them to extend their body awareness into their everyday environment.
The assignment requires that students spend about a half hour in a public space and
observe how people use their bodies in relation to the objects and the people around
them. This is one way for a student to step out of class and see how movement is a fundamental
form of communication. Through both these assignments students are building
skills in body awareness. They are learning human anatomy, developing a connection to
their own personal structure, and investigating how they can begin to use dance as a tool
to re-educate their body by applying this knowledge to correct body use. All of this will
lead to a heightened sense of physical awareness that is fundamental in being able to
develop a student’s technical skills in dance. Although writing will remain an essential
activity in dance training, I have begun to think “outside the box” and develop new, nonwritten
assignments that help to broaden the educational experience of my dance students.
As the use of technology becomes every more widespread in our everyday lives,
Andy Fitz
Andy Fitz
“Still/Going”
dance instructors need to find ways to incorporate it into curricula. Video technology has
become a strong element in several of my dance courses. In Dance Technique, video
work was initially successfully integrated into the course through an assignment designed
by my colleague, Kathleen Ridlon, which requires students to complete a series of recorded
self-studies. Due to her success with the assignment, we are now using it in all of our
intermediate-level technique classes.
For this assignment, the students are asked to videotape themselves throughout the
term to demonstrate their level of physical proficiency on class combinations. To get the
students excited about this project we allow them to perform the combinations to their
own music selections and to present them at different tempos. I do have the benefit of
teaching in a small college where my largest class is around 20 students, and I have chosen
to use this project in only my intermediate classes. On the other hand, my students
have access to only two departmental cameras 2 days a week. This limited access has
proven to be just enough that in a 10-week term I can require the students to find the
time to videotape themselves on three different occasions. The outcome of this project is
that my students have a greater understanding of their skills and are better prepared to
focus on their weaknesses. This project has also pushed them to develop their performance
skills, and overall, my students are learning and retaining information more quickly
in class and are more focused.
One can also use video in Dance Composition classes. As discussed earlier, Dance
Composition requires that students complete a series of focused movement studies. This
year I am assigning my Dance Composition students a dance-for-video project. There has
been an explosion of work in this area in contemporary dance. My goal in creating this
assignment is to train my students in video technology and teach them about how dance
translates differently in a different medium. Today’s college students are already exploring
the world of video technology, and I believe that it is my role as an educator to help
my students learn how to use the tools of today wisely. Although I do have the benefit of
understanding video editing software, I do not believe that this is a prerequisite for the
integration of video-related class assignments. With some advanced planning, an instructor
without video skills can often find the necessary support for integration in their institution’s
computer center or Audio/Visual Department.
Dance History Curriculum
Dance History courses are valuable because they provide a vehicle for the discussion
of the development of dance as an art form and the relationship between dance and the
development of all world cultures. Dance History provides a context that a dance professor
can use to discuss the ideas of politics, cultural identity, and technological progress,
among other topics. A Dance History course is one of the most obvious ways our dance
programs can draw connections to the broader university curriculum and, through this
connection, build a greater understanding of the value of dance to higher education and
cultural development.
It is with this in mind that the first assignment that I now give my dance history students
is a research paper titled “Leaving a Mark on History: Exploring Dance as an
Expressive Tool Throughout History.” For this project each student is asked to focus on a
topic of personal interest. It may be exploring this idea of dance as a tool of propaganda,
the civil rights movement, the Berlin Wall, or even AIDS in Africa. Each student then
researches how different dance artists have used dance as a tool to discuss the issue they
have chosen to investigate. By assigning this project to my students, I have discovered
that, through their research, students are able to see the power of dance and how it can
have lasting effects on a community long after a public performance.
In my opinion, many history classes across the college curriculum fail because the
course assignments are too focused on the idea of regurgitating information. Students
spend a lot of time taking notes in class only because they worry that “they may need to
know it for the final.” Some professors even delight in the idea of tricking a student with
an exam question that focuses on a minute detail from an early lecture. When the course
is over, however, how much did a student really learn about the subject?
I prefer to structure my dance history course in such a way that it provokes insightful
input from my students. One way I do this is by assigning students a presentation that
requires them to pick one dance artist that has been discussed throughout the term and
develop a performance piece that presents the life and work of that artist. The students
must find a way to inform the audience of the advances made in the history of dance
through their artist’s work; how the students achieve that goal is up to them and their
own creativity. I allow students to collaborate on this assignment, which has lead to the
some of the most exciting presentations. In class I have seen Merce Cunningham and
John Cage reunite for one last creative adventure together. Doris Humphrey and Charles
Weidman have come together for a final duet, and the founding members of the Judson
Church Theater group have rejoined to present one last happening on the steps of my
college’s Old Main building. What this assignment does for my students is to breathe life
into an exciting topic and help them to understand that dance is a continually evolving
art form—that they, as the next generation of dance artists, can learn from the past and,
through their art, find ways to connect to the world around them. They see how, through
all of their coursework in the program, dance is much more than perfecting the movement.
Dance can be and is a part of a fully integrated curriculum that can prepare them
to speak, perform, appreciate, and create dance with the next generation of artists.
If we as dance professors take the time to responsibly develop coursework that reinforces
the mission of any one of our given dance classes, we will help our students develop
a broader and a deeper understanding of the field of dance. They will understand the
history of the art form and how world history has played a role in its development. They
will be well versed in creating dance compositions, and they will be able to explain the
elements of their compositions. They will be confident individuals in their own bodies
because they will understand what role their everyday choices play in how they present
themselves physically to other people. Through the connections that they have made
between what they are learning in dance and its relationship to their world as a whole,
we will have provided them with life skills that enable them to become well-rounded,
intellectually minded, and verbally articulate professionals in dance, or in any field they
choose to pursue.
Incorporating Dance into a Fitness Unit
There are a few ways I would incorporate fitness in dance lessons.
(1) First every lesson would start off with a warm-up. I would have the students get in their dance space and then travel using various locomotor movements. This would warm up the body and get them ready for a workout.
(2) I would create a lesson that would devote most of its time to traveling skills and frequent repetition. The frequent repetitions of sequences would increase heart rate. This would also be a hidden way to increase cardio-respiratory endurance.
(3) I would also emphasize fitness through the various balances, stretches, shapes, and non-locomotor movements. These all promote the muscle strength, muscle endurance, and flexibility aspects of fitness.
The Role of Dance in the National Standards for Physical Education
NSPE:
Standard 1: Demonstration of competency in motor skills and movement patterns needed to perform a variety of physical activities.
Standard 2: Demonstration of understanding of movement concepts, principles, strategies, and tactics as they apply to the learning and performance of physical activities.
Standard 6: Values physical activity for health, enjoyment, challenge, self-expression, and/or social interaction.
MA Frameworks:
2.1 Apply movement concepts including direction, balance, level (high, low), pathway (straight, curve, zigzag), range (expansive, narrow), and force absorption (rigid, with bent knees) to extend versatility and improve physical performance In pairs, students practice throwing and catching different objects, then hitting a target. Observe partner and use movement concepts to provide feedback
2.2 Use a variety of manipulative (throwing, catching, striking), locomotor (walking, running, skipping, hopping, galloping, sliding, jumping, leaping), and non-locomotor (twisting, balancing, extending) skills as individuals and in teams
2.3 Perform rhythm routines, including dancing, to demonstrate fundamental movement skills
2.8 Use combinations of manipulative, locomotor, and non-locomotor skills to develop movement sequences and patterns, both individually and with others
2.10 Perform a rhythm routine that combines traveling, rolling, balancing, and weight transfer into smooth flowing sequences with intentional changes in direction, speed, and flow Students create gymnastics or dance routines using objects (such as balls and flags)
2.12 Participate in activities that promote physical fitness, decrease sedentary lifestyle, and relieve mental and emotional tension
The role of dance in NSPE (as well as in state frameworks) is that of a culmination of several requirements. A competency in movement patterns and concepts asks students to be capable to perform and understand performances in a series of motions. By completing a set of moves or actions to some type of rhythmic pattern, a dance is performed and though students (particularly at young ages) will not realize that they are meeting the goals set to be met nationwide, they will be on track to learn and develop throughout the physical education program.
More significantly, Standard 6 values self-expression through physical activity. Dance has been an expression of self and culture since early civilizations were formed. Teaching dance in physical education courses allows for opening the minds of students to experience other traditions as well as offers a means to for students to express themselves through physical activity. Teaching dance in schools helps to promote a positive physical health, the burning of energy can relieve stress and improve mental health, and can even improve cardiovascular health by means of an aerobic workout.
