This appendix is intended to give teachers ideas for teaching the dance elements within dance units. It includes suggested activities that relate the dance elements to the students' own world.
Teachers can use the appendix in a number of ways. The suggested activities contained within the appendix:
Explain to students that the completion of an action is as important as the action itself. Tell students that if people talk all the time, we do not listen. If one stops talking, one is able to listen. Similarly, movement is not meaningful if it goes on and on. We have to feel stops and starts to make it exciting. Hide and seek would not be exciting if all we did was run. It is hiding, or the stillness, that makes it exciting. Watch a kitten play with a ball of wool. The kitten moves, stops, starts, pounces, and freezes. There is a collected energy in the stillness. Discuss.
Actively explore linking movement words with stopping words. Encourage students to be aware of correct alignment, different shapes, and different levels. Ask the students to feel the strength and control in their stillness, to freeze smoothly in sequences such as:
Ask students to brainstorm a list of action words. Remind students that stillness is also an action and that their list should include words that suggest stillness. Display. From the list, select and order words to explore through movement such as:
Review motif symbols. Choose three or four symbols to explore such as those representing the following action sequences:
Encourage students to fully explore the symbols. How many ways can students do this? Can they do that in another shape? On another pathway? Direction?
Review different ways of being airborne. Explore different kinds of jumps and hops. Try jumping with the knees high or jumping in a crouch. Sequence different actions. Have students decide on a pathway for the action sequence.
Explore the action words of a poem, story, or song. Encourage students to fully explore each action word. How else could they do that action? Could they do it in another direction? Shape? The following is an example of a poem that could be used with the students:
Running, sliding, skipping around
When my feet go up, my head comes down
Twisting and twirling
Swinging and swirling
I stop to listen and close.
Have students write their own poems or stories inspired by the action phrases.
Learn the Métis dance entitled the Red River Jig . Note that students create and combine their own jigging steps in this dance.
Remind students that, in dance, the body is the instrument. Say to the students, “In art, we draw with a pencil or paint with a brush. In dance, we are the instrument. There is only one of us in all of time. We cannot throw our bodies away or get new ones. Our bodies must be cared for, respected.”
Encourage correct alignment in the students' bodies. Look at a skeleton to demonstrate correct body alignment. Practise walking, bending, and jumping with an awareness of correct alignment.
Remind students that, in dance, feeling the body moving is as important as moving. Explain that the sensations felt when moving are called kinesthetic sensations. Have students stand on their feet and sway from side to side. Discuss with students the way the sensations of students' bodies change as students sway. Try other examples, such as gripping and releasing hands.
Use an image of the wind as a stimulus to explore body concepts. As the wind blows, it rolls and twirls the students high and low about the space. A lull in the wind causes a moment of stillness in the students' movement. Encourage students to be aware of what their bodies are doing. Which body base are students on now? Which body part is leading their movement? Which body part are they emphasizing?
Ask students how many ways students can move their bodies. Have students experiment with their hands and arms. Ask students to describe the ways students can move their hands and arms. Have students explore the same actions with other body parts. Contrast these actions with locomotor actions.
Duration and Speed
Explain to students that moving quickly usually takes a short time and that moving slowly usually takes a long time. It is also true that some fast movements can take a long time and that some slow movements can take a short time. For example, a fast car can travel a long time before slowing; a puff of smoke lasts a short time before it disappears.
Use words as stimuli to explore duration and speed (e.g., linger, stroll, slow motion, hasten, and spurt). Explore the words through movement. Explore a variety of combinations of speed and duration.
Encourage students to use different body parts, body bases, and pathways. Explore the following, for example:
Energy
Explain to students that when we move with energy, we can use a little, a lot, or an amount in-between.
Energy exists on a continuum. Ask students to think of examples. Batteries or wind-up toys, which run down, are two examples. Have students bounce balls ? strongly, lightly, and in-between. Ask students to describe their use of energy. Discuss.
Explore moving using only a little, an in-between amount, or a lot of energy. Encourage students by asking questions such as “How does the energy feel in your body? Heavy? Light? Strong?” Explore the following:
Have students explore the surge of energy in collapsing, falling, and swinging actions.
Qualities
Review the idea that movements have qualities; for example:
Explain to students that sometimes an image or a feeling might be associated with a movement. For example, have a student demonstrate a stomping movement. Does that movement make them think of anything? What? Use other examples. Discuss.
Reinforce the students' understanding of movement qualities. Explore light, strong, sudden, and sustained movement. Explore combinations of two qualities; for example, light and sustained (floating, hover); sudden and strong (stomp, seize).
Use characters or imaginary creatures as stimuli to explore qualities. How would the students' characters move? Strongly? Firmly? What shape would they be? Would they wander or move directly somewhere? Encourage students to explore a variety of qualities.
Time Signatures
Have the students listen to various pieces of music or to a drumbeat. Clap to the music or drumbeat.
Identify the time signature. Practise travelling to the music or drumbeat. (Note: Some students may have difficulty moving to an external beat. Do not worry about this; it will take time.)
Explore swinging movements done to a 3/4 time signature. Encourage flowing movements where students are stretching their arms, legs, and torsos. Have students carve circular pathways in the air imagining that students have soft knees and a soft body. They are moving in water or perhaps on clouds.
Explore sharp movements done to a marching 4/4 time signature. Encourage angular movements by having students show angular body shapes. How do students' elbows and knees help the angular movements? Are the movements strong or light?
Have students experience moving to music. Have students learn dances such as The Red River Jig (Métis) or Bingo (Scottish-American).
Explain relationship ideas to the students. For example, have students look at the way objects are arranged in the classroom. Which objects are near, far, together, touching, or surrounding one another?
In the game of Follow the Leader, someone is leading and others are following. When walking down the street, they might pass by someone or they might meet someone and then part. Have the students demonstrate the relationship ideas. Discuss.
Use the idea of a shadow as a stimulus to explore following and leading. Have students explore leading and following movements using different placements (e.g., side by side, facing each other, in front of and behind, or near and far apart).
Do not take the shadow idea too literally as it may become a “tripping over each other” dance if no space is left between the leader and the shadow.
Have students explore relationships in groups. Explore a few ideas at a time; for example, start far away, crawl and pass by, roll and connect, wiggle to a new place together. (Students who might be reluctant to touch one another can be encouraged to touch their toes, knees, or elbows together.)
Meeting and parting is a universal dance pattern clearly seen in all couple dances. These dances have the partners stay together, go apart, return, go around, or perform other combinations. Have students look at the relationships in such a dance. Have students review or learn a culture's dance that uses couples such as La Danse du Crochet (Métis), The Virginia Reel (American), or The Horse and Buggy Schottische (International).
Directions and Levels
Review the idea that we can move through space using different directions and levels. Relate this idea to the students' world. For example, the flight of a stunt pilot is exciting because of swoops and dives, from high to low levels; a football player moves forward, backward, and sideways among the opponents. In dance, different levels and directions make movements interesting to watch. (Note: In dance, levels and directions are thought of in relation to the dancer. There are three levels ? high, middle, and low or deep. There are six directions ? upward, downward, forward, backward, and sideways.)
Use the idea of a snake being charmed by a snake charmer to explore directions and levels. Encourage students to explore curving, wiggling, and weaving actions from a low to a high level. Have students imagine their hands are snakes, their legs are snakes, their whole bodies are snakes; their bodies are penetrating space as they are charmed. Encourage sideways and backward movements. End with the snake being released to slink and slither away, coil, and rest.
Explore action words that suggest different levels (e.g., float, writhe, soar, and collapse). Explore doing the actions in unusual directions.
Focus
Draw students' attention to the idea of focus, or where they direct their gaze. To demonstrate that looking is important in dance, have a student walk looking outward. Have another student walk looking downward. Ask the students to explain the difference in effect. Perhaps downward is seen as unhappy, outward as being confident. Discuss.
Have students explore seeking movements. Explore looking all around, high, low, and other movements of seeking to find. Sometimes we may rush to look, and other times we peep to see. Ask students what kind of pathways they are using. Zigzag? Meandering?
Pathways
Explain to students that pathways are like cutouts; they draw attention to unoccupied space. Demonstrate by having students stand in a circle or a square. Draw their attention to the space they are creating. Have the students do a circle folk dance they know and watch the space change as they move inward and outward. For example, do the Kinderpolka (German).
Explore circular, triangular, or square pathways on the floor. Ask students to demonstrate their pattern in different ways, such as running or sliding. Contrast this pathway by exploring a random pathway.
Explore movements that contrast curved pathways with straight pathways. Encourage students to explore pathways in the air and on the floor using locomotor and non-locomotor movements. A starter list of movements includes:
Shapes
Explain symmetry and asymmetry to the students. Show examples. Explain that, in dance, the body can have a symmetrical shape or an asymmetrical shape. Have students try both.
Choose symmetrical and asymmetrical shapes from pictures ? gargoyle shapes, athletes in action, or shapes seen in dance pictures. Memorize the shapes. Explore different ways of moving from one shape to the next, quickly and slowly.
Size
Explain to students that they can become larger and they can become smaller; their movements can become larger and smaller. A popcorn kernel pops from its small size to a large size. Accordions squeeze and expand. Bones grow and shrink. Discuss.
Explore different ways to show growing and shrinking shapes. “What part(s) of the shape is growing? Shrinking? From where is it growing? What is initiating the action? To where can it grow?”
Explore movements that become larger and smaller; for example, a gesture or travelling step, that increases and decreases in size. Contrast the growing and shrinking shapes with the movements that become larger and smaller.