- Every person is allocated a word to move to with the music e.g. swing, lyrical, percussive, sustained
- Follow the leader’s movements and move around the space
- Change leader so every person gets a couple of turns as leader
Today’s workshop saw us learning the dance steps to the Hairspray song. In the “real” world of teaching, it could probably take a few weeks to teach children the steps. I am beginning to understand how the dance instructions are being broken down. It gives students the chance to practice and be familiar with the steps, at the same time, allows for the teacher to spot mistakes and give feedback on individuals.
We then learnt some choreography to 'You Can't Stop the Beat'. The focus was on timing, characterisation and performance.
How we learnt the steps to a song in just an hour: I think this is a fantastic way for teachers to help break-down the steps, one which we can employ in our future lessons:
- Break up into rows.
- Teach dance steps.
- Students line up in rows of 6 behind a leader at one end of the dance studio.
- Teacher to repeat and demonstrate the first step of the song.
- Play music and allow students who are first in line to dance towards the other end of studio.
- When all steps have been rehearsed and students, teacher puts all the dance steps together.
Half the class then performed the dance to the other half, which was good as it allowed you to pick up good techniques from the others in your class, while at the same time there was safety in numbers.
During lecture, we explored:
SPACE: Where, Dimensions (forwards, backwards, up, down), Pathways (curved, linear, zig zag)
TIME: When, Tempo, Duration, Rhythm, Beat
DYNAMICS: How, Quality (Swinging, Lyrical, Sustained Movement, Vibratory, Percussive), Movement, Force