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Doing a conference

July 27th, 2009 · ··

On the occasion of having recently been to New York City for the NDEO 2009 Conference Focus on Dance Education: Take a Bite of the Apple/Exploring Resources to Promote Best Practices, I recommend it — doing a professional conference — although it does take a fair amount of energy, time, trouble & money.  Here are some good reasons to go:

  1. Meeting & hearing from other professional dance educators offers a wider perspective of what’s going on in the field. For a short span of time, you can quit just putting one foot in front of the other, come out of your own context, and look around. While you’re looking, you may discover which of your issues are of national/global concern, as well as avenues for problem-solving together.
  2. Ideas are worth sharing — your own & other peoples’.  Although I don’t get great ideas from every session, I always come home with a couple of wonderful nuggets — kernels to mull over, try out & mold to my own purposes. Meanwhile, I find it refreshing to discuss my own work with others and get their feedback.
  3. It’s good to meet some folks you’ve heard of — authors of books, frequent presenters, folks  you’ve exchanged emails with…
  4. It’s validating. I tend to return with a feeling of satisfaction, both in my chosen profession & in my own work. Although I’m a bit of a cynic and don’t tend to plunge whole-heartedly into all conference sessions & activities, I generally feel afterwards as if I’ve been to a buffet, sampling the tastiest offerings while maintaining an appetite for more.

So, some highlights of the NDEO Conference:

  1. Meeting & hearing from other professional dance educators: NDEO has initiated a new website, which offers some customized networking. I was glad for the chance to learn more about the K-12 Forum by participating as a panel member on the topic of “Subject Discrimination: A Hindrance to Best Practices in Dance Education,” by listening in on the K-12 Interest Group Task Force, and by attending a roundtable discussion of issues for K-12 dance educators.  NDEO’s K-12 Forum will go live on their website in August, and it has potential — if K-12 educators get involved! [Available to NDEO members through their log-in…]
  2. Ideas are worth sharingI went to 2 particularly noteworthy sessions.  In “Teaching Critical Thinking Through Movement Patterns,” Sheila Kogan presented a clear progression for teaching choreographic form, including ABA & expansions of ABA, rondo & some theme & variation — with strategies appropriate for all levels. Then too, in “A Framework for Dance Literacy Using LOD in Grades K-3,” Barry Blumenfeld, from  the 92nd Street Y‘s Dance Education Laboratory, presented highlights from the studio’s systematic integration of Laban Movement Analysis & Language of Dance into their curriculum for young dancers.  I’ll be looking back over my notes from both sessions…
  3. It’s good to meet some folks you’ve heard of: Nice to meet face-to-face with various NDEO board members I’ve only known through emails, as well as the editor of Dance Teacher Magazine.
  4. It’s validating: I definitely returned feeling more in touch with my professional world.

Having gone to about 4 out-of-state conferences in the last 8 or 9 years, I’m clearly not addicted to going to conferences — but I do recommend it…

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SYTYCD: so you thought you could disregard…

July 24th, 2009 · ···

disregard vb. 1. to give little or no attention to; ignore.  2. to treat as unworthy of consideration or respect.

So You Think You Can Dance has been going on for 5 years now, but I’ve only just hopped on the bandwagon.  Despite having seen it once or twice a couple years ago  — and appreciated the fact that the dances are really good because they use good choreographers! — it’s taken me this long to join the audience for a couple reasons: 1. I don’t generally support the idea of dance as a competitive activity, & 2. I don’t watch much TV, so I couldn’t remember to turn it on.

But it’s summer vacation, I’ve been watching for 3 weeks (that’s 6 shows) & I’m a fan! These are things I like:

  • There’s great choreography, with a focus on the expressive power of dance & dancers;
  • It’s a good showcase for all styles of dance;
  • Meaning takes priority over style — you quit caring whether it’s ballet, modern or hiphop because you’re caught by the dance;
  • Respect is front and center — respect for dance styles, choreographers, the audience, family members, and especially for the contestants (even as contestants lose, the show features footage of their best moments, and the contestants themselves appear grateful for what they’ve gained — no coverage of them walking sadly out the door, with bitter words);
  • Cooperation & mutual respect — key players in the dance world — are apparent.
  • They found a place for Ellen Degeneres as a judge, and she was fabulous — human, humorous & humble!

I do have some bones to pick:

  • Why on earth do dancers/choreographers refer to dances & choreography as routines?!  Yes, one of the definitions of the word is as “a set sequence of dance steps,” but the first definition is “a usual or regular method of procedure, esp. one that is unvarying.” So even when the word routine means dance steps,” it connotes “boring.”
  • The televised audition phase of SYTYCD (which again, I haven’t seen much of, but that doesn’t prevent me from forming an opinion!) is less respectful than the actual competition, with more time spent on the usual histrionics of reality-TV.
  • I often don’t agree with the voting audience.  But then, I’m not voting yet, so what’s my beef?

Regardless, I’m finding the art more important than the competition in SYTYCD, & I now have a TV show that I remember to turn on.

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Summer thoughts

July 21st, 2009 · ·

My mind’s been neither as empty as my summer classroom nor as stagnant as this blog since June 19th. Fact is, the content of my posts reflect the intersection of dance & my life, while the rhythm of my posts is equally expressive [as in, a single post in May was all that could happen midst the detailed run-up to an end-of-year performance].

So what’s been in my mind during this blogging silence…?

from Skyline Hotel on West 10th

from Skyline Hotel on West 10th

  • A trip to New York City for the annual National Dance Education Organization conference. Usually, I go directly from the last day of school to teaching a 2-week intensive at Seattle University for pre-service teachers & grad students on the use of dance in the classroom, but this year the NDEO Conference was a great excuse for going to NYC.  There’s more to say, but in a later blog…

    To do pile

    To do pile

  • An overhaul of my home office, including boxes of binders & past plan books that I gathered & brought home for organization & simplification over the summer… will I get to them?!
  • Details of life — home, family, garden, future plans, friends — that get weedy & messy when ignored, blossom more generously when nurtured.
    things unattended

    things unattended

    things nurtured

    things nurtured

  • Looking ahead: For as long as I’ve taught in my current location, the grade levels have been mostly mixed (kindergarten, 1st-2nd, 3rd-4th, 5th — requiring 4 lesson plans per day). In the coming year, thanks to the pressure of grade level standards in all content areas, I’ll have straight grades for the first time (K, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th — six differently-leveled classes per day?).  I’m mulling strategies to accomplish the change without an overload of lesson-planning.
  • Looking ahead… My entire staff, including myself, is being trained in Writers Workshop (that’s Lucy Calkins, I think) this summer. Clearly, I’ll be integrating more writing and/or using parallels with the Writers Workshop to teach choreography.
  • Concentrating on my own body.  No, not dancing. Recuperating and nurturing my weary joints with rest, a little swimming, a little Pilates, a little Gyrotonics, a little bike-riding, some physical therapy, and a lot of the exercise that comes with life.

So there you have it. The mind stays busy, even while on vacation. And I’ll be back, with more to say about it…

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Dance around the world

June 19th, 2009 · ·

Look for “Dance Around the World” in The Big Picture.

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Ah… summer

June 19th, 2009 ·

stripped, sorted, packed up & put away

sorted, packed up & put away

dusted, wrapped up & papered over

dusted, wrapped up & papered over

not much left but dust bunnies

nothin' left but dust bunnies

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Rehearsal: skill development for kindergarteners

June 18th, 2009 · ····

Performance over, there’s finally time to review the process…

There’s a lot to learn in the process of rehearsal, if the dance is built for continuous learning. And although the goal of rehearsal would seem to be a more perfect performance, it’s not.  It’s growth.  There’s a limit to how perfectly kindergarteners are going to perform, no matter how much rehearsal.  My dances for kindergarteners are structured not choreographed, aiming for growth during the rehearsal process. As they learn in rehearsal, the dancers change and improve.

The kindergarteners prepared two dances:

The Shoemaker dance alternates a gestural passage with a locomotor passage. The musical version I use has 10 repetitions (here’s a version of the music with 4 repetitions), which allows for a lot of practice on developmental & locomotor movements. The gestural passage is always the same, although they can perform it standing, sitting, or lying down. For the locomotor sections, we sequence through developmental & locomotor skills: gallop, hop, jump, skip, chasse, bear walk, crocodile, frog jump, crab walk, ending with a free choice.

[Note: “Bear walk,” “crocodile,” and “frog jump” are developmental movements, using body-half right & left, cross-lateral crawl, and body-half upper-lower respectively. “Bear walk” is a body-half move on all hands & feet, with right and left alternating. “Crocodile” moves on the belly with arm and opposite leg advancing simultaneously and pulling. “Frog jump” moves both hands, then both feet, then jumps with hands and feet in the air. If you ever run across the 1994 Feldenkrais video for children Move Like the Animals, check it out for with kid-friendly demonstrations of the “bear walk,” “crocodile,” and “frog jump.”]

So the skills that are drilled during rehearsal are:

  • body organizations and locomotor skills foundational to academic development,
  • listening and responding to musical cues in an AB pattern,
  • moving & choosing pathways freely & safely among other dancers.

Our second dance was called Dream Story, a narrative based on emotions, which the kindergarteners helped develop. What were they practicing every time they did the dance…?

  • juggling & hand-eye coordination,
  • listening & responding to musical cues,
  • associating emotions with nonverbal expression,
  • cycling through and changing their emotions on cue.

Details of the narrated story:    Once upon a time there were children who were happily juggling (juggling two scarves). After awhile, they got sleepy, lay down for a nap, and began to dream (the scarves become pillow & blanket).  In the dream they woke up in a strange land and began to explore… they saw soft popcorn clouds (scarves in curvy pathways), beautiful candy rainbows (scarves arcing over heads), and white diamond moons (scarves tossed high). Suddenly, the dream became scary when ugly monsters, fiery dragons, and biting scarecrows appeared (scarves are gathered into the hands, with movements tight, close, sharp).  Monsters were small, large, behind, and all around (changing focus & directions)! The children put on brave faces, took their magic wands, and turned the scary creatures into sunlight (2 scarves held in one hand as a magic wand, with slashes to work the magic).  Finally, the dream ended, and the children slept soundly (pillow & blanket). When they woke up, they felt happy and began to juggle again.

Music: “Fairytale,” in 7 parts, from Eric Chappelle’s , Music for Creative Dance: Contrast & Continuum, volume 3.

No matter how much practice, there will be one child who discovers that downstage center is a great place from which to locate Mom and Dad. Another might be taken by the urge to run laps around the stage. If rehearsal has succeeded, the first dancer doesn’t fall off the edge, and the second one avoids both bumps and blood while dodging other dancers. And everyone’s skills improve.

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Training the audience

June 17th, 2009 · ····

Audience norms are really different, depending on the event.  Golf: total silence for the swing.  Ballet: silence with applause following fantastic turns and jumps.  Modern: silence, even following fantastic turns and jumps. Baseball: general conversation, cell phones & folks hawking food, but don’t disturb your neighbor during a play, and be ready to cheer wildly at a moment’s notice.  Church: depending on the flavor, audience participation ranges from mumbled responses to loud exhortations.  Symphony: total silence, especially between two parts in a series — don’t applaud until eveyone else does.  School performance: cell phones, conversations, babies crying, people talking, with possibly wild cheers whenever the featured performer (the child they’ve come to see) comes on stage!?

Ideally, standards for the audience at the kids’ performance would be the same standards we teach our kids — pegged as the 4 A’s of Audience Participation in Anne Gilbert’s Brain-Compatible Dance Education:

Attend, Allow, Applaud, Appreciate

Which translates as Pay attention to everyone even if it’s not your child; Allow the kids to do their best by not distracting them with noise & confusion; Applaud when they’re done; & Appreciate them later by telling them what they did fabulously.

No harm in briefing your parents on the same standards the students have learned — ostenstibly so they’ll know what the kids are learning. Meanwhile, maybe they’ll take a hint.

Other strategies:

Spend some time with the kids working up a rubric for what good performers do and then share the rubric with parents, so they’ll have a context for appreciating their children. Post it in written form, so you can brief them very quickly — which saves time and leaves it available as a reference. This approach gives them something to think about…

Provide program notes to clarify the origin and details about the piece students are performing, what they learned from it, and how they built it.  The context may help them focus.

Ask the parents for help in the form of quiet listening — explain that the kids are working really hard on concentrating and being heard, and the audience can help them succeed.

Make the same pre-performance announcement about cell phones that other performance venues do… or at least ask folks to take their call outside if it’s important.  In the same vein, request that parents keep small siblings off the stage and with them, for everyone’s safety.

Plant some allies along the sidelines (teachers? the principal?) to remind the worst offenders.

Results are best when proactive rather than reactive. Once the noise starts, it’s hard to stop.  Use a different strategy each time, and repeat the ones that work. Hopefully, the audience will gradually improve to meet standards — allowing everyone’s kid to do their best by giving quiet attention and applause!

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Guest voice: Post-performance blues

June 13th, 2009 · ·······

It’s been my hope & intention that this blog might be a means for myself and others to converse with each other from our isolated locations as dance educators.  All for the purpose of sharing ideas, anxieties, questions, solutions, hopes, and humor as we hone our skills for the daily diet of dance we serve.  In that spirit, I’d like to introduce Katie Wood, a music specialist who integrates dance, and whose comment following my last blog appears here as a Guest Voice, expressing some familiar post-performance anxieties. Thank you, Katie, for sharing such fresh thoughts!

Post-Performance Sleeplessness from Katie Wood

Wow – I have so much spinning through my own mind right now, that it is 2 am and I am up from my bed to calm my thoughts. Cannot sleep.

We performed tonight. More on that in a bit.

Of late, I’ve been preparing my OWN 325 performers to tell folktales from around the world through music and movement. We incorporated storytelling with singing, playing instruments, drama and dance. Whew! What an exciting thing — watching your students begin to take the lead, …when you as a teacher are able to let go and the kids take over. In that moment when you know you’ve done the best you can do.

I faced some challenges. I think my 2nd graders were bored for a while (too much repetition) while my 1st graders could not get enough! 3rd grade came together at the last minute, with energy and enthusiasm, and 4th graders were refining and refining and refining. I learned the importance of stepping back, and stepping in, and of taking things apart to put them back together in a more thoughtful and complete way. I learned how to teach a musical concept by exploring it first, then defining (and refining and refining and refining).

Wow, the kids taught me a LOT this year.

We performed this evening. The turn out was unpredictable, so all kids had practiced each part (musical and otherwise) in order to be ready for anything. I think this helped kids to see the big picture, but left me feeling a bit scattered, assigning parts in the moment. It worked, but not 100% smoothly.

4th grade was NERVOUS. Perhaps they should not be first next time?  2nd grade was small, but what a difference an audience made for them. And I felt the most connected to this group as they performed. We had fun. 1st grade came out in droves. And the audience behavior was horrid.

I am horrified at the effect of a noisy audience on my students. Adults began to chatter (were they on their cell phones – really!???!!!!!) and the volume increased… until my 1st grade students, the most excited (and most throughly prepared group), began to check out and chatter themselves.

Now I am no fool. I stood there thinking, “OK – maybe this is too long… the pacing is off… the kids are too spread out… good for the classroom, maybe too much for a performance?… what is going on?… these are first graders people – you need to LISTEN!!!!!”

I am shocked and appauled at this problem, which I have run into more than once during performances now. Last year, it was a spring musical. In the gym. Kids (not students) running – RUNNING – across the “stage” unattended while we performed. Audience talking nonstop. I had to stop the show twice.

This year, I tried the cafeteria. Better for the winter program, but still a lot of chatter. I addressed this BEFORE the program. And DURING. My own students (grade 5) were some of the worst culprits!

This time, the audience behavior affected the performers. They lost focus, momentum, and I nearly lost my cool. I stopped the performance to regain the audience’s attention. But it was never the same. My third graders were able to pull a bit more focus from the audience, but transitions were a challenge. And since about half of my kids didn’t show up, we had to make adjustments on the fly, which didn’t help the flow, to say the least.

The kids did great, made adjustments when necessary and really gave it their all. WHY did the audience fail us? What can I do to address this problem? I’m lying awake thinking I may need to forget about evening performances altogether, or just keep it to a “class” perfromance in my classroom – which has been more successful in the past (smaller, more intimate – more proximity to the kids AND the ADULTS!!!). What a difference a stage could make, with lighting – I think maybe that could help??? I am at a loss, and now I’ve lost sleep over it. Any thoughts??

Many thanks, Katie, since I’ve faced similar difficulties. I’m still ruminating about these audience issues and will share my thoughts here soon… Thanks for expressing your post-performance thoughts so immediately!

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Performance: Kids & costumes & sound, oh my!

June 7th, 2009 · ········

The silence resounding on this blog since the last entry reflects in reverse the noisy mantra that took over my brain and all spare moments of my life the past few weeks, accelerating toward and recovering from performance. Like the shrill chant of “lions & tigers & bears” in The Wizard of Oz, the details of getting ready echo through the days, interrupted periodically by emurgent (that’s emerging and urgent) realizations and distracting surprises (or were they surprising distractions). No enumeration of the checklists I carried on snippets of paper and post-its can quite convey the variety and number of items that called for attention, but a few that became part of the daily rhythm were… [pictured below] keeping the learning going during rehearsal, finishing the choreography in final rehearsals, arranging and rearranging props, translating the learning into program notes for the audience, and continually tweaking the sound system…

…not to mention managing the 325 kids that crossed the stage each day for rehearsal and other shenanigans.

What were the dances? Details to come.

How did it go? Great!  The afternoon performance was so much fun that an average of 75% of students brought their families back for the evening performance (which is fabulous for us).

Was it all worth it? Ask me in a few months!

teaching self-assessment

teaching self-assessment

finding time to choreograph the ending of the dance

finding time to choreograph the ending of the dance

Arranging props

Arranging props

bags & sticks & scarves & bands...

bags & sticks & scarves & bands...

The cycle of sedimentary, metamorphic & igneous rock formation

The cycle of sedimentary, metamorphic & igneous rock formation

Moving from sound-in-the-classroom to sound on the stage and in the audience

Moving from sound-in-the-classroom to sound on the stage and in the audience

and ensuring a backup in case of computer failure

and ensuring a backup in case of computer failure

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Performance: Learning x 325

May 12th, 2009 · ·······

Busy time of year… building toward the final performance. We’ve had small performances throughout the year — one class at a time, showing something at the end of a unit.  And we meant to have a performance last December, but it was stormed out. So the excitement is bubbling now.  Each day, students ask me, “Is it tonight?”

We’re in our sixth week of preparing for the End-of-Year Performance, with two weeks til the final day.  All 325 students will dance to show curricular content, steps, moves, skills, and ensemble work. First through fifth grade classes have had about 8 hours of rehearsal each, including the process of introducing a theme, exploring related dance elements, creating choreography, and beginning to put the whole piece together.  This is the point when every minute is needed in order to make it work, and it’s my work to make the sometimes-tedious job of rehearsal a rich and varied learning experience.

So much depends on the context though… and here’s my context:

  • a percentage of my students will miss the final performance because 1. their parents have too many jobs or small kids to get out in the evening, or 2. their parents don’t feel comfortable at an English-speaking event without interpretation (and the task of interpretating 10-12 different languages is daunting), or 3. their religion disapproves of dancing, music, and performing;
  • my school has a lot of  families who qualify for free- and reduced-price lunches.

These realities influence our performances some…

  • We have two performances, one at 2:00 & one at 6:30. Since the 2:00 show may be the only chance for some dancers, both are full performances [the final rehearsal is the day before]. At the 2:00 version, kids perform for each other, with some extra time for getting on-and-off the stage, in-and-out of the audience.  At the 6:30 show, dancers are in the “green room” [their classrooms], while families and friends fill the audience.
  • In order to prevent dances in the evening from being totally decimated by absences, classes pair for performing, with 50 kids onstage in the afternoon and whoever-comes at night.  Before I started this strategy, there was a  dance by 1st & 2nd graders that went from 25-strong in the afternoon to 4 in the evening.  They did a great job, but the fear factor was bigger than the fun factor!
  • Parts have to be pretty interchangeable, since we never know who’s going to be missing at night.  When I’m assigning parts, I don’t ask whether they’ll be there in the evening ’cause every one of them deserves to be a full participant at rehearsals.
  • We mostly don’t do costumes, which are anxiety-producing for the kids: “Ms. M, I don’t have a white shirt”… “Ms. M, is it OK if my white shirt has green and black stripes?!”… “Ms. M, should I wear my soccer shirt inside out?!”

So here we are, 2 weeks from performance. Each class has developed large chunks of choreography. Tomorrow we start putting it all together — two classes meet, share their choreography, and begin to mold their fragments into one dance.  And then, little by little, I’ll reduce my side-coaching to a minimum, until finally I’ll stand back and watch — and hope — in silence, as they dance their hearts out, with and without mistakes.

Have a different approach to performances? Different parameters? Different concerns? Do share!

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