You are the dancing queen...?

Just to get us in to the groove for this weeks exploration of dance... here is comedian Judson Laipply's "Evolution of Dance":

Dance helps to develop coordination, strength and endurance, expression and awareness, interaction and cooperation, and problem solving skills (National dance education organization, 2015). Whether we are aware of it or not, everyday movements are connected with our feelings, ideas and thoughts. The aim of dance education is to expand on this connection and provide children with opportunities to explore the meaning of the movement of their bodies (Deans, Meiners, & Young, 2012, p. 130).

Margaret Barr's 'Afternoon on a sand dune'. Source: http://acms.sl.nsw.gov.au/item/itemdetailpaged.aspx?itemid=421396

I found Cone and Cone's (2012) box of crayons analogy really helped me visualise how the elements of dance work together. Different crayon combinations blend together to produce an infinite variety of pictures and drawings in the same way as the different elements of dance are used to produce an infinite number of dances (Cone & Cone, 2012, p. 23).

The "I want to dance, let's do it again" case study by Deans et al. (2012) demonstrated how a dance class can be divided in to four clearly defined sections: Warm-up, Generating a dance, Free dance (improvising by exploring and responding) and Dance drawings (Deans et al., 2012, p. 137-138). I really enjoyed reading about the dance drawings and how they are used to reflect on what the children recalled from their dancing experience. These drawings play an important role in enabling the children to record their involvement in and response to the dance content and also provided the teacher with insight in to the child's level of engagement and thinking about the activity (Deans et al., 2012, p. 136).

BBC School Radio provides a fantastic dance resource that I can certainly see myself utilising in my classroom!

References:

Cone, T. & Cone, S. (2012). Teaching children dance. Canberra, ACT: Human Kinetics.

Deans, J., Meiners, J. & Young, S. (2012). Dance: Art embodied. In C. Sinclair, N. Jeannert & J. O'Toole (Eds), Education in the arts. Melbourne, VIC: Oxford University Press.

National dance education organization. (2015). Standards for dance in early childhood. Retrieved from http://www.ndeo.org/content.aspx?page_id=22&club_id=893257&module_id=55419