For the first time in our dance workshop, a literary piece was introduced as a text to work off for today's session. I had not realized in the past that this would be a great way of integrating other KLAs, specifically in English and literacy, into the dance curriculum. The book that we worked with was called Henry & Amy, which follows the tale of these two opposite-headed friends and explores themes of friendship, sameness and difference, conformity and originality. The character of Henry is portrayed as somewhat of a conundrum, forever stuck in opposite mode, constantly out of step with the world around him and did things in unique ways. On the other hand, the other protagonist Amy is painted as a perfect child who never went against the grain and everything just worked out for her.
During our workshop, we could easily bring these thematic elements into our routines and numbers. For the first activity we played a variation of the "telephone" game, in which the first person in line performed an action embodying the character of either Henry or Amy only to the second person in the line with no verbal cues. The second person would then tap the third person in the line to show them the action, and so forth. At the end, the last person in the line would perform the action at the same time as the first person, and we could all see how jumbled or altered the routine got! I've always been a fan of these communication games because it takes a high degree of concentration and observation to successfully pass down a message. In this case, we worked with elements of dance which throws an additional challenging wrench into the mix.
The focus activity of the workshop was to join a group that was either Henry or Amy-centric, or a combination group of the two characters blended. In each group, we were to create a routine that reflected the personality each character through use of different levels, the space, travel and timing. I was in the Henry-centric group and we came up with a routine where each of us stood in a jagged pattern and created a 4 count routine depicting some wacky component of Henry's eccentricities. I commenced the routine with a half-hearted half push-up and "tagged" the next Henry in our formation who repeated and passed it on. This activity and workshop worked very well in linking other KLAs to the dancing instruction. I previously had not thought of using story books, or any literary text for that matter, to demonstrate dancing outcomes. But through this workshop, I now have a rationale of using literary texts to increase "aesthetic literacy" (Gibson & Ewing, 2011, pg. 8).
References
Gibson, R. & Ewing, R. (2011). Transforming the curriculum through the arts. Camberwell: Palgrave Macmillon.
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| Henry & Amy by Stephen Michael King |
The focus activity of the workshop was to join a group that was either Henry or Amy-centric, or a combination group of the two characters blended. In each group, we were to create a routine that reflected the personality each character through use of different levels, the space, travel and timing. I was in the Henry-centric group and we came up with a routine where each of us stood in a jagged pattern and created a 4 count routine depicting some wacky component of Henry's eccentricities. I commenced the routine with a half-hearted half push-up and "tagged" the next Henry in our formation who repeated and passed it on. This activity and workshop worked very well in linking other KLAs to the dancing instruction. I previously had not thought of using story books, or any literary text for that matter, to demonstrate dancing outcomes. But through this workshop, I now have a rationale of using literary texts to increase "aesthetic literacy" (Gibson & Ewing, 2011, pg. 8).
References
Gibson, R. & Ewing, R. (2011). Transforming the curriculum through the arts. Camberwell: Palgrave Macmillon.
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