This weeks lecture looked at creative dance. We first looked at what creative dance is and Cone (2009) describes it as allowing the children to come up with their own dance routines. “One of the most powerful experiences dance educators can offer children is the opportunity to create a dance that reflects their ideas” (Cone, 2009). I thought this quote was really interesting because it explains that a major element of teaching dance is giving the children a chance to express themselves. This links with one of the CfE Experiences and Outcomes for dance which says “Inspired by a range of stimuli, I can express my ideas, thoughts and feelings through creative work in dance” (Education Scotland). We also learned that creative dance has lots of benefits for the pupils, such as increased confidence and mental & physical wellbeing. It can also develop an ability to communicate and work in groups and can increase self confidence. These skills and increased self confidence can be across other subjects and benefit other areas of life. We then went on the discus what our role is, as teachers, when teaching creative dance. This was an area that I found quite daunting because I don’t have a lot of experience in dance so I didn’t think that I would be able to teach it effectively. However, something we discussed was that the role of the teacher should include valuing the creative process and believing in the validity of children’s creativity and ideas. This means having an end goal for the children to work towards and for you to assess but also understanding that how the children get to the end product is just as important as the end product itself. It also includes creating a safe environment in the class for the children to feel comfortable to explore their ideas and then perform them. We can also use stimulus to inspire the children and this could come from a variety of sources such as photos, videos, or watching a performance. We also discussed some resources that could be used in schools for creative dance and a major one was youtube, where you can watch a variety of videos featuring dance, such as tutorials or performances. You could also games, like Just Dance, or other pupils who dance as a hobby as resources for dancing.
In our music input we were playing the glockenspiels again but instead of following notes or sheet music, we were improvising. As warmup, we played some simple tunes on the glockenspiels to remember what to do and then we moved on to the improvisation. We were only given 4 four notes to invent with but that was more than enough. We each took it in turn to improvise a couple of bars on the glockenspiels to a backing track of “hit the road jack”. The idea of inventing music in front of the rest of my peer group really scared me. Music has never really been a strong point of mine or an area that I felt confident in. This increased my nerves but in reality, there wasn’t much to it. Everyone had a go one after an other, no body was made to feel horrible about their contribution and we all congratulated each other. This was because we had made a safe environment in our room where everyone felt comfortable to express their ideas.
In our dance input, we started by combining all our different group sections into one. big, whole class dance. We all worked together to come up with different poses for in-between the group sections. Everyone made different suggestions and all their opinions were valued and listened to, no one was made to feel stupid for having an idea. This is another example of the safe space that is needed for creative dance or for any type of creating. However, something that I noticed was that our dance lecturer done very little during our workshop. She helped with some of the technical things like timing and spacing but other than that, it was mostly just us students. This highlighted how little the teacher has to do in a creative dance lesson.
References
- Cone, T.P. (2009) Following their lead: Supporting children’s ideas for creating dances. Journal of Dance Education, Vol 9(3), pp.81-89
- Education Scotland (2017) Curriculum For Excellence: Experiences and Outcomes [Online] Available:https://education.gov.scot/Documents/All-experiencesoutcomes18.pdf [Accessed: 20th of November 2019]
