Time: 6-8 weeks
Ideas for dance expressions come from many different sources such as the imagination, the environment, other dances, and personal experiences.
Sample Topic: "Dances We Have Seen"
Suggested Resources:
Starter List of Activities
1. Introductory Activities
Watch a variety of dances and keep a list of the elements of dance. Note the use of body shapes and dynamics of the actions, pathways, and relationships of each dancer to the other. Use this information to compare and contrast dances.
Talk about gestures as motion of the limbs or body made to express or help express thought or to emphasize speech. Practise different ways dancers can gesture using arms, legs, and head.
Attend a dance performance in the community.
Learn a few basic travelling steps from different dance forms (e.g., hop and skip from the polka). Practise them slowly, gradually increasing the speed. Then practise doing them slow to fast and back to slow again.
Watch dances with the intention of noting repetition. Ask students why choreographers might repeat certain phrases and if such repetitions are effective.
2. Main Activities
Watch a dance performance and have students pick out a few movements that students remember. Explore the movements using extremes of high/low, strong/soft, and fast/slow to make them their own. Then, in groups explore some of the formations students saw. Combine the students' ideas to create a group dance in response to the performance. Refer to Responding to Arts Expressions for more information.
Watch a video and pick out an arm or leg gesture that leads toward, away from, and around the body. Explore these movements. Review Labanotation motifs. Have the students use these motifs or make up visual symbols to represent the movements. Guide students to make up their own gesture dance. Refer to Planning for Students' Dance Making.
In partners, have students teach each other phrases made and put them together to make a dance in binary form.
Have students watch a contemporary dance and then talk about what they thought were the main ideas of the dance.
Research one or more heritage dance forms and find out where they originated, why they were started, what they say about the culture, and what the costumes look like. Students could work in groups to make displays or posters that capture the information.
Research dance groups in the community and find out how they contribute to the cultural environment of the province.
Have students learn a few different rhythms from different dances, practise them, and make a dance to their favourite rhythm.
Watch some dances with intricate formations and pathways. In small groups, have students explore and examine these patterns. Create a dance using a basic walking step to create these formations.
3. Concluding Activities
Create a display of world dances.
Have students show their dances to a partner or other small group and then discuss them. Students might start with phrases such as “This was interesting because …” or “Why did you do …?” or “I expected you to do …” This is not meant to critique but to flesh out ideas and see how others respond to each student's or each group's work.
Have students keep a journal of their dance ideas, problems, and any notation used.
Look at pictures and videos of ballet and examine how the dance form has changed over the centuries. Have students brainstorm why these changes might occur.
Arrange a time to show a part of the actual dance to other students in the school and then have the students show their responses to the original work.
After exploring dances of a particular culture, find examples of art or music from the same time period or region. Discuss the relationships among the various art forms.
Sample Topic: "Humour"
Suggested Resources:
1. Introductory Activities
Have students tell about funny things that have happened to them or a friend. See if students can group the stories into common themes or categories.
Have students write about a time when they were clumsy and it turned out to be very funny. They may be willing to share their stories with a friend.
Watch Ginette Laurin's piece “A Full House”. Discuss the humour in the piece. What makes it funny, and why might Laurin use this approach? Use Responding to Arts Expressions as a guide.
Ask students to demonstrate what they think is a funny movement. Let one person at a time demonstrate and then have the rest of the class try that movement. Students could try some of the movements with a leg or an arm, then explore how these movements could lead students around the room.
As a class, come up with a list of things that the students think are funny and then brainstorm the kinds of movements that are associated with these funny examples. Explore some of the students' ideas and create some humourous dance phrases. Combine two or three phrases to create short dance sequences. Discuss how each group used the elements of dance.
To create contrast in the funny dance phrases, students may find ways to manipulate the elements of dance (i.e., actions, body, dynamics, space, and relationships) to turn the movements from sad to happy. For example, students may speed up the movement or try it with strong or light force.
Read funny comic strips. Discuss the humour in them and what makes them funny. Recreate the shapes found in the comic strip and then add transitions between them. A transition is a short movement to take the body from one shape or movement to another.
Have students practise doing everyday movements greatly exaggerated. How does this add to the humour of the movement?
In partners, have one student stand in alignment while the other tries to make the person laugh and break alignment without touching that person.
2. Main Activities
Have students read A Falling Star by Vivien Alcock and pick out the funny parts of the story. Be sure to have them note why they thought these parts were funny. Once students have selected four or five examples, have them create a tableau or still image with their bodies to represent these images and retell the story. From there, students could add movement (i.e., transitions) between each pose to create a movement sequence.
Using Planning for Students' Dance Making, guide students in the creation of their own dance expressions based on a humourous idea or situation as a starting point. Remind students that although the piece is to be humourous, it must be respectful of people and the dancers. Encourage full exploration of the dance elements to avoid mimicry.
View and discuss Danny Grossman's dance entitled “Curious School of Theatrical Dancing”. Have each student develop his or her own clown dance. Have students read the interview with Bing-Go the Clown from “On with the Show” as a guide to making a clown dance. Then, have each student make a list of characteristics that his/her clown will possess (e.g., clumsy, confused, always obedient, and so on). Next, explore these characteristics with movement. Suggest that students choose three or four phrases to combine into a dance sequence. Remind students to be attentive to the transitions and the sequencing in order that the movements have both meaning and purpose. Refer to the drama strand for other ideas related to clowns.
After viewing Ginette Laurin's dance “A Full House”, discuss what other places might provide a humourous backdrop for a dance. Choose one and try to recreate that place in the classroom using pictures and construction paper. Then make a funny dance to be performed in that space. For example, students may want to do a dance in a restaurant; therefore, the movements may reflect those of a waitress/waiter, cook, or person in the restaurant.
In groups, have students create a funny story or poem that they are willing to use as inspiration for a dance. Have them explore the actions in their story through movement. As a group, have students choose the actions and shapes to use in students' funny story dance. Be sure to note that they will need to include a variety of movements to add contrast to the composition.
Have students view or recall a funny scene from a movie, including as many details as possible. Pick out a short movement phrase to explore. Try to recreate the movement phrase by manipulating the elements of dance (i.e., body, actions, dynamics, relationships, and space). Repeat with a different phrase chosen from the movie. Caution: In the beginning, students are likely to recreate literal movement. Exploring movement by varying elements of dance helps students take their movement from literal to abstract.
Have students watch “Full House” choreographed by Ginette Laurin, or Danny Grossman's solo entitled “ Curious Schools of Theatrical Dancing”. Individually, have students pick out three or four movements that students think are funny. First, have them practise the movements, trying to get them as close as possible to the original. Then, repeat the movements but gradually speed them up and slow them down. Discuss how changing the speed changes the other elements of movement (e.g., taking a movement from slow to fast may make the student's weight and balance change to adapt to the change in effort). Lastly, have students choose some of the original movements together with students' own variations to incorporate into a dance. Be sure that students know that repetition is perfectly acceptable and helps to create unity.
Have students come up with ridiculous or out of the ordinary situations and list them on the board. Make dances based on these situations, using the section Planning for Students' Dance Making. For example, students may think that swimming in molasses would be outrageous. To do this, one would have to use a lot of muscle strength (i.e., strong movement), and one would move very slowly. Students and teachers could use this idea, as well as others, as a basis for a dance.
In pairs or small groups, have students create a dance that involves a prank or trick. Remember to include exaggerated movements to keep movements funny. This will help the viewer understand what is happening.
Teach a short movement phrase to the class and have students make the phrase humourous by exaggerating the movement and/or adding a surprise ending. Put the two phrases together to create a dance in binary or ABA form.
3. Concluding Activities
Have the students record their dance-making ideas and process in their journals. Have students note what worked and what did not. They may also want to invent and record dance notation symbols to document the movements students have created.
Watch scenes from cartoons or movies that are funny. Discuss how the movement in the scene makes it funny.
Form pairs and perform dances for each other. Have students discuss what they saw that was funny and what the performer intended.
Find a dancer or choreographer who does humourous kinds of dance. Research cultural heritage dances to see which ones have a basis in humour.
Invite a First Nations storyteller to come in and tell a funny story from his/her culture. Have students create a dance based on that story.
Have students research Ginette Laurin to see if she uses other stimuli for dance.
Examine funny pieces of art work. Students may respond to the humourous art work through dance.
Study and research clowns. How do they become clowns? What do they have to do? Are there different kinds of clowns?
Have students research Cirque du Soleil.
Students might create a large drawing or painting on rolls of paper to use as a backdrop for the dance, or to represent the humour in the dance.
Have students interview dancers in their own community. Ask them if they have seen or danced a humourous dance. Do they like dancing humourous dances? Why or why not?