This unit focuses on how choreographers organize their movement ideas into a form. Random movement is meaningless unless it is given form. In this unit, at every grade, students focus on the decision making that choreographers engage in when sequencing movements to create dances. Students learn about and explore various forms or structures used in dance.
Time: 6-8 weeks
Teacher Note:
Unit 3 has been developed as a sample unit for Grade 3 (available on CD-Rom and on Saskatchewan Learning website).
Sample Topic: "Phrasing"
Teacher Information:
Students create a dance in binary form.
Please note that form is the structure of the dance. Binary form has a two-part structure, AB. Do not confuse this concept of form with dance forms which are ballet, modern, tap, jazz, social, and others.
Suggested Resources:
Starter List of Activities
1. Introductory Activities
Play some slow music and have students pair up to do call and response movements. One person improvises a short phrase and the other student responds. Gradually, the whole body is incorporated.
Play a clapping game with students to illustrate two-part form. Clap a short rhythm and call it A. Clap a different rhythm and call it B. Try moving in different ways to the A and B rhythms. Explain to the students that in dance there are many dance phrases that combine to make a dance, just like phrases of words combine to make a sentence. Illustrate.
Play a piece of music that has binary form. Help students hear that there are two parts to the music, an A part and a B part. Explain that the two parts are different and that they “contrast” with one another. Ask the students how the parts are different. Explain that in dance, movement phrases can also be contrasted.
Teach the students a simple dance or review a dance already learned. Identify the dance phrases.
Use colours and shapes to illustrate two part form (e.g., circle, square for part A and green, blue, green for Part B).
Explore contrasting movements such as light and strong, fast and slow, locomotor and non-locomotor.
2. Main Activities
Arrange for students to demonstrate to each other the concept of contrasting parts in small groups. Group A could create dance phrases on a high level, for example. Group B could create a dance phrase on a low level. Combine the two parts to see how they contrast. Make sure the students note the relationship to others in the group as they make dance phrases.
Ask the students to brainstorm ideas on how movement phrases might be contrasted. For example, one phrase could be fast, the other slow (dynamics); one could travel, the other could move on the spot (actions); one could use big movements, the other small (space). Discuss and allow time for students to make contrasting dance movements of students' own.
Guide students through the process of creating two dance phrases that contrast with one another. Work on one dance phrase at a time. Ask students questions to help students clarify the dance phrases. For example: “Where are students travelling? What direction are they going? How can they make their shapes more rounded, or longer? Do students find their movements interesting to do? How can students make the movements interesting to do?”
Have students create contrasting dance phrases using the different body zones (i.e., front, back, upper, and lower). Put two phrases together to create a binary form dance. Students may also want to work on directions here.
Have students create dance compositions with binary form. Accompany the students with percussion instruments or music.
Invite students to create a dance that focuses on contrasting pathways.
Have students create dance phrases based on feelings or expressions (e.g., happy, sad; or scared, sad). Put two different feeling phrases together to create a dance in binary form.
Teach a dance phrase to the class and have pairs of students create the second phrase to make a binary dance. Note the elements in the first phrase. The students can decide if they want to make a contrasting phrase or make new movements with the same elements. Students can add their own beginning, middle, and end positions.
3. Concluding Activities
Have the students show their dances to the class and describe how the two parts in the dance compositions contrast with each other. Discuss.
Have students reflect on the similarities between the dance compositions of the other students and their own dance experiences.
Have students use dance steps from a heritage dance with which students are familiar to create their own dances in binary form. Have small groups of students work together. Encourage students to develop phrases of movements that students can combine to create a dance. The following is an example:
Have students create dance compositions to accompany a piece of music with binary form. Ask students to listen to the music and describe how the different parts of the music make students feel. Record the descriptors on the board. They may include words such as scared, quiet, or nervous, depending on the music.
Ask students to brainstorm movement ideas associated with the two parts of the music. Encourage students by asking questions related to the elements of dance. For example, a quiet feeling might suggest slow (dynamics) gestures (actions), drawing large arcs through space. Nervousness might suggest short, sharp (dynamics) scurrying actions, or constantly changing directions (space).
Have students explore their movement ideas for each part of the music separately. Select some of the movements to create contrasting dance phrases. Lastly, have the students connect their dance phrases to create a dance composition with binary form.
Write a two-part poem to go with a dance. Alternatively, have students paint a picture that they feel represents binary form.
Ask a person from the school or community to come in to demonstrate his or her cultural heritage dance. Note the difference in phrases. Have students ask the guest about the dance form and history of the dance.
Sample Topic: "Chance"
Suggested Resources:
Starter List of Activities
1. Introductory Activities
Ask students what “chance” means to them. Help them think of examples of chance such as games, dice, cards, meeting people that you know unexpectedly, and so on.
Teach a few of Laban's movement notation motifs, and practise them so that the students are very familiar with the selected motif symbols. Basic motifs include: any action, travel, turn, fall, gesture, and others.
Make a spinning arrow on a large sheet of paper. Place words for different dynamics on the edge of the sheet of paper. Create a list of action words on paper and place them in a hat. Pull an action word out of the hat and spin the wheel to determine how the students will carry out the action indicated by the arrow. For example, the action may be punch and the elements may be slow and strong. Refer to The Elements of Dance for a list of words.
Teach a short phrase of movement. Call out different body parts to initiate or lead that movement. For example, travel and turn with hand leading. Have students repeat the phrase with new instructions; for example, travel and turn with elbow leading.
Write several simple rhythm patterns on pieces of paper and place them in a hat. Pull them out one at a time and have students clap the rhythms.
2. Main Activities
Use dice or a game of chance such as Twister or Snakes and Ladders to teach the concept of chance.
Put three different rhythm patterns labelled “one”, “two”, and “three” in a hat and have students choose one. Individually, have students create movement patterns for the rhythm that they chose.
After creating their movement patterns individually, have the “ones”, “twos”, and “threes” join to create three rhythm groups. When the teacher plays the appropriate rhythm for each group, have those students perform their movement patterns. Students can repeat their movement pattern to the rhythm as many times as they want. Have the students who are observing note the different things that students can do with the same rhythm.
Draw a diagram of a large square and divide it into four smaller squares. Assign one colour for each square. Label the squares with the following four questions:
Place possible answers to the above questions into four bags that correspond in colour to each of the squares. Students pull one possible answer from each bag to make up a dance. For example, students may pull “arm” from the What bag; “up and down” from the Where bag; “alone” from the With Whom bag; and “very slowly” from the How bag.
Have students create dance compositions with binary form through chance. For example, have students draw action, body, dynamic, space, and relationship concepts out of a hat. Match the concepts with each other to create a movement idea. For example, match “spring”, “large”, and “elbow” together. Explore different ways of interpreting large, springing movements involving the elbow. Repeat as often as necessary to get a number of movements. Explore the ideas and refine the movements.
Assign numbers to each of the movements, and then throw dice to order the movements into a dance phrase. In the same way, create another dance phrase that contrasts with the first. Connect the two dance phrases to create a dance composition with binary form.
Have students choose three cards from the deal-a-dance section of Building More Dances . Have students put the three ideas together in a dance. Students could also create a story to go along with it.
In three different bags, place a list of body zones (e.g., upper half, or left side), Laban's movement effort system (e.g., light-strong, sudden-sustained, free-bound, or direct-indirect) and a pathway. Have the students create a dance in whatever order they like. Ensure that they use all of the options pulled and have a clear beginning, middle, and end.
Put several of Laban's motifs (i.e., simple drawings that represent movement) in a hat, and have the students pull a few and create a dance with them. Refer to The Elements of Dance for assistance.
3. Concluding ActivitiesAsk students to perform the dances, half of the class at a time. Have the students identify different elements of dance and write them on the board.
Play a Simon Says type of game with one group using dice, a spinning arrow, or a folded paper hand game to direct another group's movement. Use chance to decide who moves first, in what direction, at what level, and how the elements of dance are used.
Have students teach their dances to a friend, so that students can exchange ideas and combine their individual dance phrases into one new dance with a partner. From a hat, the pair picks a type of relationship to explore (e.g., near, far, behind, or below).
Have students create their own dance motif language. From this starting point, the students can create visual art works with the symbols or create new dances using the newly invented symbols.
Have five short videos of dance available. Try to select a variety from Saskatchewan , Canada , and Europe of professional or non-professional origins. Once a week, draw from a hat to determine which video the students will watch. Be sure to note the elements of dance. Use a process such as one outlined in Responding to Arts Expressions.
Randomly give students a choreographer or dance company to research on the Internet. As a class, create questions to be answered.