Problem Solving
Introduction
Once students have completed both the warm up and stretch routines, they are to have a game of How Many Body Parts (Dance Improvisations, pg 54).
Students move around the space to the music. Encourage students to explore a variety of locomotion modes and dance levels. When the music stops, students form groups of a given number and create a pose with a given number of body parts in contact with the floor. Once students have achieved their pose, music returns and students continue moving around the space.
This activity promotes problem solving as students are required to form a safe, sustainable pose abiding by the group number and body part number.
Choreography
Students have been working in groups to choreograph a bollywood or hiphop style dance routine. In this workshop, students explore the choreographic devices of canon and repetition.
In their selected style (or other dance genre) students develop a dance phrase to be performed in a canon. Students can choose between a simple, simultaneous or cumulative canon.
Next students create a sequence with an element of repetition. Again students can choose their selected style (bollywood or hiphop) or other dance genre.
Students choreograph either a canon or element of repetition (or both) into their performance piece, and continue to rehearse/refine dance phrases and sequences in the lead up to a whole dance composition.