Dance post 1

Hello everyone, and welcome!

I would like to share with you some of the wonderful things I have learned and experienced on my quest to better understanding everything and anything to do with the realm of Dance!

Having myself had no experience with formal training of any sort, I hope my posts will give a refreshing perspective on the topic at hand. I also hope that these posts can serve as a source of inspiration to other educators who are slightly frightened by the idea of beginning something that is so foreign to them. Not to worry; if I can do it, anyone can!

This post will highlight one of the many fun, engaging and educational activities I have come across during my experiences in the Dance classroom. For this post, I would like to focus on 'clay tableaux'. This activity is great for many reasons, one of which is that it (as the name so obviously indicated) is directly related to tableaux, which is something that students coming in from a drama class would probably already be familiar with.

Some students might be intimidated by having seen choreographed dances in the past and may think that it is too hard and may be overwhelmed, however, they may find doing something like tableaux quite easy. Now, as the teacher, if you can get students like these to do as few as 4 or 5 tableaux, you are in a position to surprise them! As a teacher you can give your students time to practice their 4-5 tableaux and repeat them several times. After having rehearsed their 4-5 tableaux if the students can just slightly increase the pace with which they transition from one tableaux to the next they will find themselves actually having made a mini-choreographed dance! This is such a great activity to get students to build their confidence, and by showing students that they can accomplish a task successfully, they will be more likely to be energetic and engaged in the future.

Possible accommodations that can be made is simply to allow more time for students that need it, so that they can use their creativity and to overcome any of the challenges they see before them. Also, by modelling the activity for them as a teacher, and slowly scaffolding the activity, it makes it easier to manage and follow.
It was rather difficult to find a video that illustrated exactly what is described above, but that is okay because it just means that I will have to engage my class more in discussions to make sure that we are all on the same page, but with that being said, I think this video still does a good job modelling what a potential product may look like (which gives students something to work towards).

Expectation From the Ontario Curriculum:A1: Creating and Presenting: ​apply the creative process to the composition of movement sequences and short dance pieces using the elements of dance to communicate feelings, ideas, and stories