Week 5, Dance Styles: African Dance Movements - 16/04/15
Tutor: Jacqui Dressens Two main components
This lesson was mainly taught using direct instruction, Jacqui showed us what to do and we imitated the movement, chant etc.. African dance specific emphasis/choreography/terminology: - Your Sun = refers to your chest - Your Moon = refers to your bottom - Your Stars = refers to your crotch area - Movement of the waist is characteristic of African dance, emphasising your sun and moon - Stamping/dancing on the earth is a symbol of praising mother earth - We discussed the importance of not calling a dance 'African' rather, the dance is influenced by the movements you are familiar with from Africa - Look to the parents of the students of the school to talk about different cultures The importance of teaching African culture through the Arts is outlined in an article by Ward 2013 (see hot link in references below). Despite the fact that this article is written in the context of the United States of America it still raises the importance of education about African dance as a way of promoting social action against racism as it can create cross-cultural connections for students. The article also outlines some teaching strategies and features of African dance which can be used in the classroom. Important resources: (Click on the sentence for the link)
1. Clapping - We begun in a circle formation (see photo 1), emphasising a feeling of community and togetherness. This gave us a chance to feel the spirt of drumming, chanting and clapping as you could see the joy it brought others by engaging in the same activity together. - We tried clapping as many different ways as we could with our hands --> this transformed into clapping the syllables of our names, Jacqui then demonstrated how movements can be put to the different kind of claps used to create a short phrase of movements - We then learnt the Kpanlogo rhythm from Ghana, meaning 'come here and dance'. Your hands alternate in a scooping action towards yourself and then clap twice, inviting those around you to join you in your activity. Jacqui showed us the rhythm and then we repeated it until it sounded confident and together. 2. Drumming and chanting (See 'youtube clip 1') We played on a Panlogo Drum - Jacqui then begun to teach those with a drum a drumming rhythm (when beating the drum, you do not use your thumbs) she used chants to help us remember the drum beats. She sings the rhythm as she beats the drum, we then imitate the actions and singing - While the drummers continue, everyone without a drum is included as they are able to do the Kpanlogo rhythm we learnt prior to this, students do the Kpanlogo rhythm when they do not have a drum for the rest of the session. - We also learnt the rhythm "beddi beddi boom bett bett boom" which also has a drumming rhythm - Jacqui then allocates groups around the room a different rhythms and chants to sing, together we play and rotate rhythms. Everyone laughs at their mistakes. Jacqui emphasises that team work holds us together - Teaching strategy from Jacqui:
3. Dancing - Animal movements We dressed up in costumes which reminded us of Africa --> good inspiration to keep in mind - Jacqui began the class by getting us to follow her as the leader (See photo 2), we got our bodies moving, some of the movements we did were the following:
- We then moved into a circle formation, practicing more animal like movements, imitating a tiger on the floor, animals drinking from the waterhole and flamingos. We practiced isolating our waist on our hands and knees - this technique gave us stability in the rest of our body and allowed us to become familiar with the movement. We learnt a short dance whilst in our circle formation (see youtube clip 2): This was a dance from Zulu, a hunting dance. The hunter imitates the animals to lure them in - Jacqui taught us each movement one at a time, adding more movements progressively as we mastered the previous parts. The movements were familiar to us from the warm up and the complexity mostly was related to how many counts were allocated to doing each step - Jacqui asked for feedback at the end, what did we like and what didn't we like - people felt that the mirrors were a harsh critique to their movement so the curtains were place over them Teaching Strategy when explicit teaching a dance:
Follow the leader: Jacqui then guided us into imitating 2 more animals, birds and a snake. For the birds, we moved around the room, flapping our arms like birds and moving with a one legged gallop - Jacqui lead is into a V formation just as birds fly For the snake, we got closer and closer in our line, joining at the elbow. The snake (our long line) coiled into it self until we couldn't any more, the snake's skin then shed as we all lay outwards from the circle on the floor. Make up our own dance work: Jacqui gave us the criteria:
Our piece had the following expressive intention: Exploring the ways in which African dance movements can start small and bring people together into a celebration Introduction: Start small, simple beat, disconnected Middle: Coming together as one Resolution: The celebration of our dance Action words to describe our expressive intention: - twisting - stomping - shaking - linking Connection to AusVELS: Foundation/Level 1
This activity is done in preparation for students as inspiration for movements for a composition piece done in a weeks time. The teacher will tell them that they are going to imitate 3 animals together today and they have to guess which animals are imitated together. Place the students in a line, the teacher remains at the front of the line. The teacher plays a repetitive African drum beat song in the background. They move around together, following the leader. The teacher takes students into the following group formations (more detail is mentioned above):
After completing the group structures, the teacher winds down the energy of the students by guiding them through some slow stretches, ending on the floor, on their backs. The teacher guides a discussion about which animals we just imitated and how our movements made us look like the animal. References: ACARA 2014, Australian Curriculum, Education Services Australia, accessed 15th April, <http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/>. Dreessens 2009, KPATSA Teaching traditional dance and rhythm from Ghana, Living Music and Dance. Ward, SA 2013, 'African Dance Aesthetics in a K–12 Dance Setting: From History to Social Justice',JOPERD: The Journal Of Physical Education, Recreation & Dance, 84, 7, pp. 31-34, SPORTDiscus with Full Text, EBSCOhost, viewed 7 June 2015. |
Photo 1: (Above) Students in circle formation - Photo in posession of Catherine Wilton (2015)
Youtube clip 1: Students using the African drums (Wilton 2015)
Photo 2: Students doing follow the leader to begin the warm up (Wilton 2015)
Youtube Clip 2: Performing our Zulu Hunting Dance (Wilton 2015)
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