Time: 6-8 weeks
This unit focuses on encouraging students to explore a range of movement possibilities in preparation for dance-making experiences. As well, the students' kinesthetic perceptions, techniques, and ability to repeat specific movements are developed. These movement explorations may then be incorporated into students' dance and dance-making activities.
Sample Topic: "Amazing Feet – Amazing Feat"
Suggested Resources:
Starter List of Activities
Teacher Note:
The following Starter List of Activities is intended to aid the teacher in planning mini-units and/or units. The activities are described very briefly, and are just a sample of the many activities that could be developed to explore the theme or topic.
1. Introductory Activities
Prepare students for viewing a dance performance. Review the elements of dance and ask students to pay close attention to how the dancers use their feet.
After viewing a ballet, jazz, or tap performance, ask a teacher or student that practises that particular dance form to provide a workshop to teach some basic steps. Have students explore the steps and organize them into a dance. Focus on the amazing footwork and the amazing feats of the dancers.
View examples of Irish and/or Scottish dancing. Focus on the footwork. Irish dancing has three basic steps called threes, sevens, and jig steps. Threes are used to dance in place, to move forward, and to move backward. Sevens are used to move sideways. There are several jig steps. Scottish dancing has four basic steps. Invite a local Irish or Scottish dancer to visit the class to demonstrate the various types of footwork. Encourage students to participate and to practise some basic footwork.
Watch excerpts from the video “The Male Dancer”, from the Footnotes video series, in which the male dancers demonstrate different types of footwork. Although the video is recommended for Secondary Level students, students of any age will appreciate watching excerpts from the ballets. Note the ways that dancers, such as Nijinsky and Nureyev, seem to defy gravity when they jump and leap. Then, practise jumping properly (i.e., starting with bent knees, jumping and landing with bent knees). Have students examine different ways to jump; notice the amount of energy it takes to jump to a certain height. From this starting point, create a dance about defying gravity.
2. Main Activities
View excerpts of folk dances from Ukraine . The video “Folk Stage Dance” includes Ukrainian, Romanian, and Russian dances performed by Saskatchewan dance ensembles. Discuss how the dancers use the elements of dance, paying particular attention to the footwork. Note how the male dancers often move to the front of the group to perform a solo. Observe and analyze the dances focusing on how the dancers use the elements of dance. Pay particular attention to the way the dancers are travelling across the dance floor and using their feet. Research Ukrainian dance companies in Saskatchewan .
Discuss reasons why traditions are often passed down from generation to generation. Interview local Ukrainian people to talk about the importance of promoting and preserving Ukrainian customs. View examples of traditional hand-embroidered Ukrainian costumes and other traditional crafts.
Have students create a dance with travelling steps. Incorporate variations of the steps as well as five different shapes. Be sure that the shape of the body is clear when moving and when still.
Learn some basic tap dance steps. Invite a resource person from the community to teach the students some simple tap dancing techniques.
View classic film footage or research, using the Internet, tap dancers such as Gregory Hines, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, or Gene Kelly. Students will find information on Dance Saskatchewan 's website http://www.dancesask.com/danceforms/tap.html or other sites such as http://www.tapdance.org.
Some school divisions purchase licences from one or more video collectives in order to provide schools with performance rights to view classic films. If the school division has such a licence, the teacher could select excerpts of dances from classic dance films that are appropriate for grade 5 students. Consult the foreword in Arts Education: A Bibliography for the Elementary Level (2003) for contact information for video collectives. Classic films that contain tap dancing include Tap (1989) featuring Gregory Hines, Sammy Davis Jr., and other tap legends; All That Jazz (Ben Vereen); An American in Paris (Gene Kelly); Broadway Melody (1940) in which Fred Astaire and Eleanor Powell dance “Begin the Beguine”; The Little Colonel (1935) featuring the classic stair dance between Shirley Temple and Bill “Bojangles” Robinson; and White Knights (1985) starring Mikhail Baryshnikov and Gregory Hines.
Encourage students to learn about contemporary tap dancers in the community or other world renowned dancers such as Savion Glover. When searching the Internet, students will discover that at age eleven, Glover danced the title role in the Tony Award winning Broadway hit “The Tap Dance Kid”. He also co-starred in the movie “Tap” with Gregory Hines and Sammy Davis Jr. In 1996, Glover won a Tony award for his dancing and choreography of the Broadway smash hit, “Bring In Da Noize, Bring In Da Funk”. Since then, Glover has starred in Spike Lee's 2000 movie “Bamboozled” and choreographed a popular TV spot with basketball players for Nike.
Invite a resource person to demonstrate and teach students a Ukrainian dance or tap dance.
Guide students in the creation of their own dances, incorporating ideas from Ukrainian dancing or tap dancing.
3. Concluding Activities
Invite an Indian fancy dancer to demonstrate and discuss the dance style. Pay particular attention to how the dancer uses his or her feet. View the video Fancy Dance: Volume 1 or read about the dance and view the regalia in the book The Modern Fancy Dancer.
Research a type of dancing called clogging. There are many different types of clogging found in England , Ireland , Canada , and various American states. Clogging draws on influences of folk dances of the British Isles , beginning with the Irish jig. Dancers usually stand in a straight line when dancing, similar to a typical contemporary line dance formation. Clogging tends to be a solo dance where one or a few dancers take turns performing while the rest watch. The movements are primarily in an up and down motion, with a double toe tap and rhythm similar to a two-step. More detailed information about clogging may be found on the Dance Saskatchewan Incorporated web site at http://www.dancesask.com/danceforms/clogging.html.
Learn a Métis dance. Study its history and invite a resource person to demonstrate and teach a workshop.
Sample Topic: "In and Outer Space"
Suggested Resources:
Starter List of Activities
1. Introductory Activities
Research the characteristics of gravity and its effects on earth and astronauts in space.
Review with students how dynamics can change the expressiveness of a movement. Dynamics is how the person or the body part moves (e.g., slow and sustained, swift and light, and so on). See the Appendix for other ideas for exploring dynamics. Students might walk in pathways using strong slow steps or light quick steps to see how the different dynamics affects the mood or the feeling the dancer conveys to the audience. Explore dynamics using other body parts such as a light quick flick of the hand compared to a strong heavy push of the fist.
Have students create a gravity dance, using any combination of skipping, running, walking, and shuffling. In partners, have students take turns being in control of gravity. For example, one student dances while the other calls out “ONE” for strong gravity, “TWO” for regular earth gravity, and “THREE” for moon-link gravity. Let students watch each other's dances and discuss what degree of effort was used and how the elements of dance changed.
2. Main Activities
Explore a range of dynamic movements inspired by the music The Planets Suite by the composer Holst. For example, students might begin with strong, slow, or faltering movements that build to a crescendo of explosive jumping and end with a collapse. Guide students as they imagine themselves walking on the moon, or taking a floating space walk attached to the spaceship. Ask the students to imagine that the line tethering the spacewalker is severed and the astronaut is slowly rolling, spinning, and travelling away from the ship into space. Create a dance using a spacewalk as inspiration. Explore weightlessness, floating and turning at different levels in the space.
3. Concluding Activities
Create a dance journey to a strange planet. Develop a storyboard or simple plot line together and then divide the story into sections. Work on the movements that would be appropriate for each section of the journey, using a web with the elements of dance as the planning tool for movement exploration. The teacher may want to divide the class into groups and have each group create a different part of the journey. The entire journey could be videotaped and discussed by the students to determine ways to improve the transitions between sections of the journey.