Monday, September 5, 2011

Dance II Semester Curriculum Plan + Composition and Improvisation + Jeneca Fredrickson

Dance II Semester Curriculum Plan
Composition and Improvisation

Assumptions:
- Students have participated in a Dance I course or equivalent that has provided them with the basic knowledge of B.E.S.T.
- Students in the class will be a variety of cultures, genders, ages, and skill levels, as seen in local high schools.
- This course was created for high school students. Adaptations would have to be made for lower grades.
- This course is designed for block classes in an AB day schedule. Class periods will be approximately 75 minutes long after time to change has been allotted.

Course Description
This is an intermediate level dance course which will educate students on the concepts of improvisation, composition, technique, dance history, performance, and artistic expression.

Resources
Utah Core Curriculum for Dance II (http://www.schools.utah.gov/curr/fineart/core_curriculum/Dance)
The Intimate Act of Choreography, Lynne Anne Blom and L. Tarin Chaplin
The Art of Making Dances, Doris Humphrey
The Creative Habit, Twyla Tharp

Course Learning Outcomes
By the end of the semester, students will demonstrate:
1. Increased strength, endurance, flexibility, coordination and agility
2. Knowledge and skills of axial movements, basic locomotor steps, dynamic balance and alignment.
3. Knowledge and skills in space; pathways, directions, facings, planes, shapes, relationships
4. Knowledge and skills in time; rhythmic phrasing, even and uneven intervals, accent, syncopation, and breath.
5. Knowledge and skills in energy through demonstrating qualities of motion.
6. Knowledge of select figures in dance history and various cultures.
7. Knowledge and skills in composition and improvisation; compositional elements, form, abstraction, meaning making.

Week 1 – 2
Begin semester with an introduction to the class, students, teacher, and concept of composition and improvisation which will be used through the whole semester.

Activities:
1. Begin learning warm up for entire semester. This should include conditioning aspects of cardiovascular work, core work, strengthening exercises, flexibility training, and technique exercises (This will include plies, tendus, degajes, leg swings, etc. but will change from week to week dependant on what is being taught that unit.). The warm up in its entirety will be about 15 - 20 minutes long but will have students moving immediately as they get to class.
2. Suspending judgment introduction will consist of talking about eliminating judgment from the class. Talk about when you are improving or creating choreography, it is important to not let anything (yourself or the influence of others) stop the creative process because that could severely limit students from reaching the potential of the movement. Ask the students to help you create a positive learning and experimenting environment. Lead students through exercises of just moving without having time to think
3. Use a shortened version of Twyla Tharp’s Creative Autobiography from her book, The Creative Habit, as a worksheet, to help students get into the mode of thinking about creativity and what they have done in the past.
4. Have class introduce themselves through improvisation through the use of movement conversations. Begin with just talking and then expand to moving while talking. Finally, eliminate talking and let the students move as if in physical conversation.
5. Continue getting to know each other through a composition activity. Have students write down five words that describe them and then create movement that shows those words. Create a short piece with those movements. Perform to introduce and explain words. Develop their individual choreography into a group piece with two or three other people by sharing each other’s choreography.


Week 3 – 6: BODY
Continue developing knowledge and skills of articulate axial and locomotor movement as well as learning about personal movement preferences and style, and choreographic structures.

Activities:
1. Continue learning warm-up. For technique exercises this unit, have combinations that include articulating the spine, dynamic balance, breath, and connection of core to distals. Add body part improvisation exercise that allows students to initiate with and articulate different body parts. Discuss the interesting movement options that come from that improvisation.
2. Teach an across the floor sequence that focuses on the contrast between axial and locomotor movements and being able to shift from stability to mobility. This will serve as a review of what had been covered in Dance I.
3. Review the five basic locomotor steps and then have students arrange the steps in their own order. Emphasize the importance of using the correct rhythm while moving. Informally assess the student’s ability to be articulate.
4. Developing and understanding of personal movement preferences through improvisation. Have students pair into couples. Have student one watch their partner, student two, as they improv. The observer should look for movement preferences, what they like to do, how they like to move, repetition of certain movements, etc. After a few minutes of observation, student one will tell student two what they observed. Student two will then have to improvise again, this time, going against their usual movement styles. Student one has the responsibility of monitoring student two to not let them go back to their preferred movement style. Switch partners and repeat
5. Teach about the pioneers of modern dance (Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, Charles Weidman, and Hanya Holme) and their development and codifying of their techniques.
6. Teach compositional structures: AB, ABA, Rondo, Natural Forms, Narrative, Collage, Theme and Variation, etc. Randomly assign structure to a group of students. Have students take the across the floor combination and change it in a way that is reflective of the structure that they were given.
7. Perform and assess composition created as well as the locomotor sequence taught through the unit.


Week 7 – 10: TIME
Learning Objective: By the end of a 7 day unit, Dance II students will be able to demonstrate an understanding of accents, syncopation, even and uneven intervals, and non-metric rhythm. Students will also understand the importance of music in choreography.

Day 1: SLOW DAY/FAST DAY
1. As students enter the classroom, tell them that they are only allowed to move in slow motion until they are notified otherwise. Also tell them to pay attention to their breath and how they were breathing as they moved. Do not play any music; just use the breath to emphasize movement. Have a variety of things laid out on the floor for the students to experiment with. They are allowed to play with the objects or dance with them but no matter what they do, they can’t break the speed of motion that they are in.
2. A third of the ways through class discuss how you felt only being able to move in that one speed. Was it dull? Was it relaxing? What did it feel like?
3. Have students switch from moving in slow motion to moving in fast motion. They are still supposed to play or dance with the objects but they can’t stop their hyper-speed mode of moving. Once again, do not play music, and there will be no speaking, but have the students emphasize what they are doing with how they are breathing. Stop this activity when you see students getting tired, which may be after a few minutes if they are doing it properly.
4. During the last bit of the class, combine slow motion and fast motion to create a more balanced way of moving. Tell students to focus on their breath, and this time instead of just breathing regularly, breathe in a way that reflects the movement that is happening in the body (ex. Sharp movement should be reflected through quick breaths).
5. Discuss how time can help make choreography interesting. Ask students if they noticed a difference in how they were moving if their body was involved. Discuss how using breath in movement can enhance the movement.

Day 2: ACCENTS
1. Warm up combination without technique section.
2. Introduce accents. In music, an accent is created whenever a music tone sounds. If a tone is played or sung loudly or with a unique quality, the tone is said to have a strong accent. It is the same with movement. Whenever a movement is done in a way that is unique to the movement that surrounds it, it is considered an accent.
3. Teach accents through first clapping a measure: (1, 2, 3), with the emphasis on one. Repeat. Once the students are catching on to that measure, have them switch the accent (1, 2, 3) and then to the last beat as the accent. Lead the students across the floor using triplets (down, up, up), emphasizing the first count. Go back across the floor by changing up the accent to the second count (up, down, up) and then back across with the third count (up, up, down).
4. Lead students through an improvisational exercise with accents. Put on music and have students start walking through space. Give a count for the students to accent with a body part. Shift accents to allow students to experience a variety of accents.
5. Cool down

Day 3: SYNCOPATION
1. Warm up combination. Technique section should include plies that emphasize non-metric (breath) rhythm. Tendus and degajes should show accents and shifting accents.
2. Repeat triplet exercise from the day before. Take note if the students are better able to do the combination after letting the rhythm settle in their brain.
3. Repeat the improvisational exercise with accents from the day before. Start out having them emphasize the accent with a body part like the day before.
4. Teach the concept of syncopation (the shifting of an expected accent, moving it from the usual strong beat to a beat that is usually weak). Take a piece of music and have students clap to the beat of the music. After they have the beat, have them start clapping in different rhythms to syncopate them.
5. Once the students have an understanding of how to syncopate a rhythm, have them repeat the activity they had just done but develop the activity from just accents to their choice of movement syncopation. Play a variety of music that will allow different movement qualities.
6. Cool down

Day 4: MUSIC
1. Warm up combination. Technique section should include plies that emphasize non-metric (breath) rhythm. Tendus and degajes should show accents and shifting accents.
2. Discuss music choices with students. Show pieces done by famous choreographers (Martha Graham, Bebe Miller, Mia Michaels, Merce Cunningham) and discuss why they chose the piece of music that they did and how the movement seems enhanced by the music choice.
3. Turn on a variety of music and have students improvise to how they feel like they should move to the music. Discuss why they chose certain movement options.
4. Also work on contrasting the movement with their music.
5. Discuss how moving with the music and against the music can make the piece more intriguing.
6. Divide students into groups to begin choreographing approximately 2 minutes of choreography that both compliments and opposes the music that they are assigned. Also tell students to use syncopation and accents as they wish to help emphasize movement.
7. Cool down.

Day 5: EVEN AND UNEVEN INTERVALS
1. Warm up combination. Technique section should include plies that emphasize non-metric (breath) rhythm. Tendus and degajes should show accents and shifting accents. Also, repeat triplet exercise.
2. Teach about musical phrases and their importance to making a piece of music sound complete. Relate this to dance and how a movement phrase does not seem complete until the phrase has come to a close.
3. Teach a phrase that contains even intervals in the metric phrase. Contrast this by teaching another phrase that has uneven intervals within the metric phrase. Discuss the difference between the phrases. Talk about what seemed more interesting, and why.
4. Continue working on choreography with groups.
5. Cool down.

Day 6: WORK DAY
1. Warm up combination. Technique section should include plies that emphasize non-metric (breath) rhythm. Tendus and degajes should show accents and shifting accents. Also, repeat triplet exercise.
2. Continue working on choreography with groups.
3. Cool down.


Day 7: ASSESSMENT
1. Warm up combination. Technique section should include plies that emphasize non-metric (breath) rhythm. Tendus and degajes should show accents and shifting accents. Also, repeat triplet exercise.
2. Have each group of students perform their choreography and then have them explain why they chose to emphasize the music at some points, and why they chose to contrast the music at others.
3. As students are watching, have them write down things that they liked and what they didn’t like in reference to the music and the movement together. Ask for students to give positive feedback to their peers on their work.


Week 11 – 14: ENERGY
Students will be able to further explore energy qualities and their ability to add interest in improvisation and choreography through dynamics.

Activities:
1. Begin unit by reviewing energy qualities through the warm up. Perform the beginning sequence the same as it has been done through the semester but the technique section should emphasize the energy qualities. Through the combinations, plies develop sustain and collapse, tendus and degajes develop percussive and sway, and leg swings develop sing and suspend.
2. Participate in an improvisation that is based on two or more qualities of energy. Give students a prompt of two of the energy qualities and have them chose how long they want to portray one quality before switching to the next. Allow the students to switch as they would like. Have two students at a time perform their improvisation to show the interesting ways that movement can be layered and contrasted on stage.
3. Continue this improvisation into a piece of choreography. Have the students choose two energy qualities that contrast each other and come up with a minute of choreography which shows the constant flux between the two.
4. Discuss meaning making in choreography. What do certain energy qualities mean or imply? How can you use that to your advantage? How can you contrast that?
5. Talk about transitions in choreography. Often these transitions contrast the movement that is done before and after them. How does this relate to energy? How does this relate to compositional structures that were taught in the first unit?
6. Perform and asses composition project by having students perform piece as a solo. Have students do a personal assessment on their piece.


Week 15 – 18: SPACE
This unit will help students to develop a better understanding of their position in space as a dancer and a choreographer, through learning pathways, directions, facings, planes, spatial floor patterns, shapes, and relationships.

Activities:
1. Continue doing warm-up at the beginning of class. For technique exercises in this unit, have combinations that are very particular in what plane they are in as well as where they are located in the room, and the pathways used.
2. Teach students a center floor combination which includes mostly axial movement but movement that can be altered to locomote. Discuss how facing the audience or just one way can be boring for the audience. Divide the class into groups of four and have each group perform the combination; however, let the students decide what way each dancer will face before the start moving. To further this idea, allow students to also change the performer’s location on the “stage” or classroom space. After the combination discuss what students like and disliked and what they would change. Repeat for all students to perform. For an added challenge, have students locomote the movement to a new place on the stage. Allow audience students to choose beginning and ending positions.
3. Develop student’s understanding of pathways through an improvisational exercise. Give students a piece of paper and have them draw a simple pathway on the paper. Then have them move through the pathway that they created. Allow students to being to solidify movement for that pathway to create a phrase of their own (approximately 32 counts). Combine multiple pathways and show how these could be interesting on stage.
4. Review positive and negative space through creating shapes with a partner. Discuss how shapes can contrast each other and how they can compliment each other. Talk about stillness in choreography and what effect it has on the choreography.
5. Talk and experiment with relationships with self, partner, and groups in choreography. Discuss what relationships seem more interesting and why. Have students in groups of 5 start to create a collaborative piece of choreography. Encourage students to use different facings, directions, pathways, and relationships than they would normally use. Also require students to add moments of stillness through the use of shapes as they had done previously in class
6. Finish the semester by having a performance with the pieces created in this last unit. Allow students to costume and choose music for their pieces. Asses student’s understanding of space in choreography through their use of elements through the choreography.

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