Time: 6-8 weeks
Ideas for dance expression come from many different sources such as the imagination, the environment, other dances, and personal experiences. This unit focuses student attention on sources of inspiration for dance.
Sample Topic: "Literature – Fables and Tales"
Suggested Resources:
Starter List of Activities
1. Introductory Activities
Explain to students that choreographers sometimes get their ideas for dances from literature; for example, story ballets.
Read a story, poem, or legend to the students. Follow up by brainstorming themes, images, and ideas that arise from the readings.
Discuss the themes and images in terms of the students' understanding of the dance elements. Encourage the students to use correct dance terminology in the discussions when appropriate. For example, what actions would the students associate with the theme or image? What shapes and pathways (space)? Would the students move slowly or quickly (dynamics)? Would they dance by themselves or in pairs (relationships)?
Use the movement ideas arising from their discussions as stimuli for dance explorations.
2. Main Activities
Example - Hansel and Gretel
Discuss how Hansel and Gretel remembered their wandering path and why it was important for Hansel and Gretel to remember the path they took. Have students think of ways to make pathways on the dance floor. Maybe students could stamp their trail out with their feet or walk with very large steps.
Discuss other aspects of the story in the same way. Discuss possible actions Hansel and Gretel might use while wandering and while fleeing. Discuss the shape and movement qualities of the witch.
Have the students create dance phrases by selecting some of the movements explored. Use percussion instruments or music to accompany the students in their dance explorations and creations. Make arrangements for the students to show their dance phrases half the class at a time, or record the dance phrases on video for later viewing.
3. Concluding Activities
Have the students describe and discuss one another's dance creations, focusing on the connections between the dance creations and the story, poem, or legend.
Have the students reflect on any connections between the dance creations seen and students' own dance experiences.
Look at dances where choreographers used literature as inspiration. Use processes such as those described in Responding to Arts Expressions to guide the students.
Sample Topic: "Street Games"
Suggested Resources:
Starter List of Activities
1. Introductory Activities
Have students generate a list of street games (e.g., skipping, hopscotch, basketball, dodge ball, hand games, roller skating, hide-and-go-seek, street hockey, hacky-sack, inline skating, or tag).
Discuss which games are the students' favourites and why. Ask students to demonstrate some of the games.
2. Main Activities
Using actions from street games, guide students through the dance-making process to create their own dances.
Work in partners to create dance phrases based on the actions of the street games. Decide which movements are pleasing and experiment with different combinations. Rearrange the actions in as many different ways as possible. Try the actions forwards and backwards, using different body parts or body bases.
Do variations on hopscotch actions using contrasting dynamics and levels. For example, jump in a hopscotch pattern forwards and backwards, at a high level and a medium level, quickly and in slow motion. Explore ways of landing the jumps upright, in a squat, on one leg or two, or with a roll.
View and experiment with different ways of using skipping ropes. Use the skipping ropes as inspiration for movement as students create short dance phrases with the ropes.
Try combining the dance phrases into a sequence. Share the sequences among the class. View the sequences and comment on the different uses of the ropes.
Explore actions associated with roller skating. Do the actions at different speeds and at different levels.
Remind the students that in dance, they will not be doing the skipping, hopscotch, roller skating, or other movements exactly as in the actual street game. As the students work, guide them through a process that uses the actions as the starting points for the movements. For example, with skating, use “gliding” as the action word for movement exploration. Find different ways of gliding. Then explore “stopping” or “spinning” and combine these actions with the gliding actions. The dances may not “look” like roller skating but will have started from that point of inspiration.
Select one or two of the actions and try starting and stopping the actions with different shapes. Use a drum or tambourine to cue the starts and stops.
Add spinning actions between the starting and stopping shapes. Move along the same pathways rolling slowly the first time and then repeating using one foot. Create zigzag pathways, wavy pathways. Add different motions with the arms.
Work in partners to create phrases that can be combined into a short dance sequence that uses roller skating as its starting point. Accompany the dance with music such as “Brand New Key”.
3. Concluding Activities
View the dance sequences with the students. Divide the class in half; one half dance while the other half observes. Ask students to observe how the street game actions have been incorporated into the work.
Arrange students in small groups and ask them to create a new street game that uses movement in some imaginative way.