July 20, 2012
In her blog entry before yesterday’s class, Michelle wrote about
the many positive cognitive effects of dance. She discussed the neural
pathways that are reinforced, the effects of physical imitation-style
learning, and of the body’s ability to remember what it has
kinesthetically learned. As insightful as her entry was, her take home
point was much less academic, much more focused on the simple JOY of
expression. I’m sure that yesterday’s class was not quite what Michelle
expected–when sickness and last minute cancellations effected
enrollment, we ended up with only one student in the class, one teacher
and two support staff. But that room was FULL of joy!
Kendall is no stranger to Daytime Moon staff or programming, so
Michelle was able both to stick with her original lesson plan and make
adjustments according to what we know to be Kendalls’ interests. She
began with a movement warmup and stretches, getting Kendall and the
other two group members, Ella and Emily, warmed up and into their
bodies. The group explored different types of movement and how dance can
be used as a medium through which to express emotion. After Michelle
got all the heart rates up, the group took a breather to watch some
videos Michelle had brought in that exemplified different types of
dances: ballet, jazz, tap, etc. My personal favorite moment in this was
Kendall’s statement that “There’s breakdancing on the floor. Ballet is
like the nutcracker dances and men in tights. And jazz is like cool guys
in glasses.” Pretty dead-on if I do say so myself.
The group during warm-up
Emily and Kendall Dancing
Michelle and Kendall dancing the macarena
After looking at all of the different kinds of dances, the group
started to talk about what kind of a dance they’d like to create.
Kendall said he’d like to create a dance that was scary. He’s very
interested in wolves and so he led the group through the story of his
favorite character, the Teen Wolf, who is a werewolf. As a human, the
Teen Wolf is made fun of, but as a wolf everyone likes him. Kendall and
Michelle talked about how this was a situation in which the Teen Wolf
would also feel very scared, and together they choreographed a dance
sequence that takes the audience through the Teen Wolf’s ostracizing
experiences, then to a final fight where the crowd realized that the
human and wolf are one in the same. Eventually, everyone accepts the
Teen Wolf for who he is inside.
Check out the final performance:
It was really exciting to watch! I hope that, if you missed it,
you’ll go back and read the Tweets from the classroom, and check out the
Facebook page for other updates. And most importantly, we have the
highlight reel from yesterday’s class posted to Daytime Moon’s YouTube
channel at www.youtube.com/user/DaytimeMoonCreations.
See you tomorrow at noon for my class, Creating a Character!
Cheers,
Jenna
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