Time: 6-8 weeks
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.
Teacher Note:
Unit 3 has been developed as a sample unit for Grade 5. (available CD-ROM and on Saskatchewan Learning website).
Sample Topic: "Surprise Endings"
Suggested Resources:
Starter List of Activities
1. Introductory Activities
Discuss stories, movies, or shows that students have seen and that feature surprise endings. Discuss why viewers were surprised.
Ask students how they might surprise a friend. How would they lead up to it to effectively ensure it would be a surprise?
Brainstorm contrasting ways of moving (e.g., fast, slow; soft, strong). Have students pick a pair of movements. Students create a phrase with one element and finish with the other. Discuss what the surprise ending felt like to them or to the people watching.
Introduce students to the concept of a storyboard such as those used by video producers, animators, multimedia developers, cartoonists, and others. Storyboards are the director's blueprints for production. Typical storyboards will indicate camera shots and other technical considerations.
Provide students with examples of storyboards. It is important to tell students that creating storyboards does not require highly developed drawing skills. Storyboards are sketches of scenes done with simple stick figures. Students can use storyboards to organize individual snapshots of a particular story, event, action sequence, or dance sequence.
Inform students that they are going to create a story or event with a surprise ending and that they will develop storyboards to guide their dance-making process. Discuss potential criteria for peer and self-assessment of the storyboards and resulting dance sequences. Prepare peer and self-assessments.
2. Main Activities
In small groups, invite students to create a short story or event approximately two to three minutes in length. Each group might select an everyday object to use as inspiration for its story. Or, alternatively, groups could be provided with the name of an object, a place, and a person and asked to create a story using those items. Create a surprise ending for the story or event.
Have each group divide a sheet of chart paper into eight squares. Ask each group to think of its story and then to determine four to eight key points of the story sequence. Have the students roughly sketch four to eight scenes using stick figures in the squares of the storyboard chart.
Take the storyboards to the gym. Have each group select the first square of its storyboard. Guide the students as they brainstorm an action word list related to each element of dance. The students are asked to explore the movement potential of each square of its group's storyboard sequence. For example, the first square of the storyboard might contain two characters entering a building. Action words might include walking, stepping, darting, sliding, crawling, and other ways of entering. Students might explore these actions at a low level, a medium level, and a high level. Relationships might include students entering together, in a line, two-by-two, and so on. Students might enter leading with different body parts such as the elbows, knees, heads, or backs. Dynamics might involve students entering slowly, quickly, jerkily, or smoothly.
When students have spent some time exploring the movement potential of the first square of their storyboard, inform them that they must create an 8 to 16 count movement sequence that will be inspired by the first square of the storyboard. Remind the students that they do not need to represent the story as if they were acting it out as a literal story. Instead, they will simply use the storyboard squares as inspiration for the dance phrases and sequences.
Remind students to include a surprise ending for their dance sequences. Brainstorm various ways of conveying surprise in dance. For example, a dance that consisted of flowing movements, organic shapes, and curved pathways might end with harsh actions, geometric shapes, and zigzag pathways
Allow several lessons to explore, develop, and refine the storyboard sequences. When the sequences have been developed, challenge the students to create their own soundscapes using vocal sounds, body percussion, or found objects to accompany the dances. Students may also be challenged to select their own recorded music ensuring that it is appropriate for the dance and the school setting.
3. Concluding Activities
Ask each group to practise and show their dance to the rest of the class. Discuss and distribute the peer and self-assessment forms developed as an introductory activity. Students may want to revise some of the criteria on the assessment forms based on the new knowledge of the dance-making process and the challenges each group faced.
Sample Topic: "My Story"
Suggested Resources:
Starter List of Activities
1. Introductory Activities
To prepare students for the dance story they will create later, have them list words that describe themselves. Students might use the letters of students' names to come up with words. Students could also work in pairs and describe each other. Have students practise moving to demonstrate their words. Be sure that students work with extremes like fast/slow and strong/light.
Have students choose four phrases to describe themselves. Then, have students pick actions that might demonstrate these descriptions. Encourage students to choose the shapes and dynamics before actually dancing them. Next, have students explore in partners the movements chosen. Arrange opportunities for students to discuss whether they chose the right movement, how to make it better, and if they communicated the way they intended.
Explore different regular and irregular rhythms using stamping, clapping, slapping, and so on. Students may want to explore with loud and soft volumes as well. Brainstorm ideas that could be associated with the different rhythms. Students may want to incorporate these into their dances later on.
Read stories that are told from a first person perspective to see how other people tell their story.
Have students stand in alignment and then make shapes with cues, such as “It's the last day of school!” or “My dog ran away”. The purpose is to show the emotions of these events in the shape of students' bodies, always returning to a neutral alignment.
2. Main Activities
Have students make a “Myself” dance, using these steps.
Ask the students, “If there was one thing you wanted people to know about you, what would it be?” Have them write this statement down. Then, have them brainstorm ideas and images that go along with this statement. Have students explore these ideas as inspiration for movement, then select three phrases to put into a dance.
Have students think of five major events in students' lives, from birth to present. Then, have students make dance phrases for each event to string together in a dance.
Have students write about an interesting or important event in their lives. Explore the movements associated with this event, manipulating the elements of dance (i.e., actions, body, dynamics, space, and relationships). Create a narrative dance, choosing carefully the movements explored.
Challenge students to create a story dance using only arm and leg gestures. Explore different dynamics to create different movement ideas. Students will have to create contrast between movements because of the restrictive nature of the exercise. For example, contrast an arm gesture with a leg gesture or put a very fast and very slow movement together.
Have students think of an action event that happened to them. Categorize the actions (e.g., percussive, jumping, falling, stillness). Using these categories and the actions associated with them, have students create a dance using the event as inspiration. Be sure that students are aware of the shape of their bodies, even when students are doing an action.
In groups, have students make up a story or event that involves each person in the group. Then, have them make up a dance to document the event or story. Be sure that students move from literal movement to expressive movement by exploring with the elements of dance (i.e., actions, space, body, dynamics, and relationships). In this dance, caution students to be especially aware of relationships. (See the Elements of Dance and the Appendix for more information.)
3. Concluding Activities
Have students record their “Myself” dances on video for later viewing or perform them for the class. Have students create a piece of art that shows their story. It could be hung up while the student shows his/her dance.
In partners, students show their dances to each other. Does the viewer understand the key events or elements of the story? Partners describe how they came up with the movements for the dances. Students may create short dance phrases in response to their partner's dances. Students could create percussion songs to accompany their dances.
Learn the hula and the story that it tells. Research the origin of this dance and what it tells about the culture. Have students make up simple symbols to represent a few key movements of the hula.
Invite a dancer in the community to come into the classroom to demonstrate how he or she tells a story through dance, or have students research a Saskatchewan dance artist who tells stories through dance.
Have students keep a journal of their dance ideas and movement phrases.