Reading writing Dance

7/28/2019 Reading writing Dance

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FEATURE ARTICLE ○

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READING ANDWRITING IN THE ARTS:A dance perspective

Many of the li teracy str ategies discussed in thi s art icle are appropri ate for dance, drama, music and vi sual art s. The art i cle focuses on reading and wr it ing in dance, whi ch means that some aspects (e.g. the process diar y) are specif ic to this subject.Teachers of ot her art s forms wi ll be able to adapt the strategies and much of the content to suit the needs of t heir subject and students.

In order to succeed in dance, students need to beable to acquire content and then to demonstrate thatthey know and understand it. How do they acquirecontent? By listening, reading and watching. How dothey demonstrate their knowledge? By speaking,writing and dancing. Therefore literacy in relation todance—talking, listening, reading and writing—isessential for progress in any dance course.

The capacity to read and write effectively in dancedoes not occur as students enter Year 11. The skillsof reading and writing are best taught and developedover the full six years of secondary school. We cannotexpect students to go from one word or sentences inStage 4, to paragraphs in Stage 5, to full essays inStage 6. Teachers need to consider carefully thegradual teaching of accumulated skills over a numberof years, building up to the expectations of readingand writing in Year 12. Therefore we need to start inthe junior years by looking at the expectations of theStage 6 Syllabus and systematically working towards

these year by year.

Skills that students need to develop in relation toreading and writing in dance include:• understanding the context of the written text• understanding the purpose of the written text

• understanding key points and concepts• defining and understanding dance-specific and

other vocabulary• notemaking from text• writing summaries from text.

Secondary teachers of dance know how difficult it isto resource teaching and learning for both Years 7-10and Years 11-12. There are no textbooks specificallywritten with school students in mind. Providingstudents with appropriate texts to develop danceknowledge and literacy is an important part of teaching.

This article attempts to identify types of writing thatstudents will encounter in their studies and to provide

some strategies to help students develop reading andwriting skills in relation to these texts.

Types of dance texts and theirpurposeHistorical source materialStudents gather factual information from a range of historical source materials. These materials mayinclude biographies and autobiographies, interviews,articles, letters, theatre programs, journals andInternet sites.

Technical textsStudents read textbooks to learn about dancetechnique, anatomy, safe dance practice andcomposition. Authors of these texts use dance-specificterminology, which students should acquire as a resultof their study. Students demonstrate theirunderstanding of technical vocabulary throughwriting, speaking and practical application.

Process diaries and choreographers’ logsProcess diaries are personal accounts of the processof making dance works. Reading about thechoreographic process aids understanding of works.Students write their own logs to develop skills inwritten communication, reflection and evaluation andin notating important stages in the process throughwords, pictures or symbols.

Extract from Curriculum Support for Creative Arts 7-12 Vol 5 No 2 2000 Curriculum K-12 DirectorateNSW Department of Education and Training





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Other strategies for developing readingskills• Consider using a strategy such as reciprocal

teaching, so that students can work in groups onunderstanding more complex texts.

• Ask questions before rather than after the studentshave read the text.

• Use scaffolds to explain concepts before studentsread a text so that they have a chance to attachthe details to an overall picture.

• Brainstorm the area to be read and ask whatstudents know before the reading. Build fieldknowledge if necessary.

• Reconstruct texts to build understandings of effective structure and also to reinforcecomprehension of concepts.

• Construct cloze* passages to test knowledge (forexample, of technical vocabulary). Cloze passagescan also be effective in giving practice in insertingother kinds of words that cause difficulty tostudents e.g. effective adjectives, correct pronouns,appropriate conjunctions.

* Cloze passages: the exercise of supplying a word that hasbeen omitted from a passage.

Writing dance textsIn writing it is not sufficient to just build up thestudent’s knowledge of technical vocabulary. We mustlook more closely at the language required to:

explain

describe

argue

criticise

evaluate.

Descriptive language is the foundation for writingresponses and reviews. The modelling and jointconstruction of text with students should occurregularly, particularly whenever new aspects of writingare being explored or troublesome areas are beingaddressed.

Response writing about dance works requiresstudents to describe and interpret the work froma personal point of view. Written reviews are similarto responses; however, the focus of the dance critic

when writing a review is to assess the value of thework by describing and contextualising certainaspects of the work and making judgements aboutits worth.

EXAMPLE 3:

Modelling descriptive language

The following extract i llustrates the use of descriptive language in an extract from a personalresponse:

The dancers enter the darkened room andmove in a circular pathway around the po’teaumitan, the central vertical mast symbolisingthe tree of life. As they move, the garland of po’teau candles flickers, pulsing cross-rhythmically with the sound of the drums, therattles, the bells and the responding call of theparticipants. A montage of matronly petticoatsand bloomers in pristine white and blood-red,and festively decorated safari suits and strawhats, moves in concentric circles in arhythmical lumbering step. The women pickup their skirts and swing them to the beat,revealing powerful legs and bare feet. As thedrumbeat quickens to call and honour thespirit loa, the pelvic and shoulder isolationsof the dancers become more forceful,accentuated by arm punches. One womanbegins to convulse, her body and balance outof control as the loa “rides” her like a horse.

The spirit that possesses her is Damballa, theserpent god, and she slithers fitfully on her

belly in the maize flour designs that decoratethe floor.

Description from video Divine Drumbeats— Katherine Dunham and her People

Strategies:

• Identify adjectives and their value indescribing the dance e.g. cross-rhythmically,lumberi ng, fitfully .

• Identify sentences that incorporate a numberof ideas e.g. As they move, the garland of po’ teau

candles fl ickers, pulsing cross-rhythmi cally wi th the sound of the drums, the ratt les, the bell s and the responding calls of the parti cipants . Thissentence describes aspects of the setting,mood and accompaniment in a succinct way.

• Watch the video segment and brainstormother words to describe the dance.

• In small groups, construct a sentence thatdescribes several aspects of the dance, usingdescribing words from brainstorm lists.

• Select good examples from the groups andpublish on a chart for display in the room.Add to this chart from other texts written inclass or at home.




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Other strategies for developing writingskills for responses and reviews• Look at specific elements of writing which can be

built up over time, for example, how to describea dance sequence using technical vocabulary.

• Talk about how description is not merely usingadjectives but the effective building of the noungroup so that information can be packed into thesentence.

• Demonstrate how to quote examples effectively.Use examples from students’ texts and fromreviews.

• Display descriptive vocabulary lists for referencewhen students are writing.

Process diariesStudents keep process diaries to document theirlearning in dance. The writing in process diaries servesa number of purposes. The handouts for last year’sNew HSC dance workshops included a comprehensivesection on using process diaries for all components

of the new Stage 6 course. These materials will behelpful for teachers of Years 7-10 as well, in givingguidance to students learning to use a journal todocument their learning. These materials are availableon the New HSC web site athttp://www.newhsc.schools.nsw.edu.au

In the example here, we will deal specifically withwriting in composition.

In composition, students document the planning andprocess of their work. Students should be encouragedto record this process in an individual way, and shouldbe provided with the purpose for such documentation,and ideas and methods for recording.

In documenting their composition process, studentswill use visual and written texts. The examples belowshow ways in which students might write about orillustrate their composition process. These examplesshow how students can record their ideas throughwords, descriptions, evaluations, symbols, images,notation and maps.

Some early ideas showingresearch into a theme

The student has selected 2 piecesof music and has documentedthe structure of each: one usinggraphic notation, the otherusing counts in phrases.

Here, words have been used as abeginning stimulus. Thosecircled were used for

improvisation leading to theestablishment of motifs.

EXAMPLE 4:

Documenting the process of composition

The following excerpts from a composition process reveal a great deal about the work in progress. Introducingstudents to a variety of ways to document their work prevents them from writing reams of text “after theevent”.




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An evaluative comment aboutthe progress of the work,including additions andvariations to the motif phrase.

Here, the student describes themotif in a phrase and a variationof the phrase. The description isstructured according to thephrasing of the music.

The first drawing illustrates amotif, a visual description of theaerial pathway of a gesture. Thesecond drawing shows a

pathway that reiterates thecurving shape of the gesturalmotif.

A series of positions in the stagespace show early thoughtsabout one aspect of forming.Included are references toelements of time, sections of the

work and use of stillness.




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Reading writing Dance