Week 4 Dance 3

DANCE 3: Space - General and Personal Space

In our last Dance workshop this semester, Nancy taught us about sensory learning and the use and effect of stimulus in a dance lesson.

SENSORY LEARNING: Teaching students to use their senses to develop imagination and their expression as well as stimulate creativity.

5 types of stimuli:

Then in the next session of the workshop, each student chose one type of stimuli and prepared the performance. The one that our group chose was the auditory stimulate, “Find Your Spark” from “Now is the Time – 170 ways to seize the moment”. The reason for selecting this type of stimuli and its resource was the literacy could be combined with multiple areas in Creative Arts. The contrast between light and darkness could be presented in Visual Arts; the sound could be played by musical instruments; the scenes in the story could be presented in Drama or Dance. “Becoming physically articulated and finding one’s own ways of moving can often improve a child’s abilities with spoken and written language” (Gibson, R. & Ewing, R., 2011). Through reading and brainstorming, students needed to present the written text into dance by focusing some key words, such as “ignites”, ”overshadows” and “threatens”. Those key verbs gave students some ideas to effectively use the elements of music and present the situation in story better. For example,

SPACE: spreading out, coming close to each other

DYNAMICS:

Opening arms – light of the spark;

Pushing (the person in the middle) down – darkness of the spark

Since this activity required students’ comprehension of the literacy, it could meet the Stage 3 KLA’s requirement that students “explore, select, organise and refine movement using the elements of dance to communicate intent” (NSW Board of Studies, 2006). As an activity focused on auditory stimuli, students need to think critically how to organise sounds and present the ideas effectively. In this case, the written text could be read out before the dance presentation. For example, in a Stage 3 Literacy lesson, auditory stimuli like listening to a written text could be combined with dance and help students develop their comprehension to the elements of Dance, Literacy and creativity.

References:

Gibson, R. & Ewing, R. (2011). Transforming the curriculum through the Arts. Palgrave Macmillan: Melbourne.

NSW Board of Studies. (2006). Creative Arts K-6 Syllabus. Sydney: BOS.