Creating Color Dances

I just finished creating my next two creative movement classes for the after school program. The theme for the next two weeks is color as inspiration for movement. Through this theme, I am able to include the literacy and language component by reading "Color Dance" by Ann Jonas  in week one, and making lists of words and phrases related to color words in week two. For instance, I will ask students to think of a color - blue. What images come up? what do you think of? what do you feel? Then, I will write their responses. I bring a travel size dry erase/paper-pad easel which makes this possible. I purchased this at Staples and I have to say, I love it. It's easy to carry, very light, easy to prop-up, and works ideal for the traveling teacher.

Incorporating literacy into my dance programs has become a very important feature to the design of my classes. In the past when I would incorporate literacy and language, it happened pretty organically. Now I am very deliberate.

Through the theme of color, the classes will focus on bodies-in-space, bodies-in-space-in-relation-to-other--bodies-in-space, boundaries, levels, size, and patterns.

Creating shapes and movements inspired by color is very much influenced by Boal method. Augusto Boal, one of my biggest influences, encourages the spect-actor to embody many abstract ideas in many different ways. By creating physical images of abstract ideas with our bodies, we can play with, explore, transform, and become more attuned to our environment and ourselves in it. The experience of making concrete images with our bodies of larger abstract ideas allows us to make discoveries about ourselves and our world we may otherwise be unaware of. This process is captured in one of my favorite Boal quotes:

“The human being perceives what it is, discovers what it is not, and imagines what it could become.” - Augusto Boal

 Yeah, that's why I do this. Through dance, drama, and movement, we are actually thinking about thinking. As a teacher - of anything - this is always, I believe, the desired outcome. That regardless of  subject or age you teach, you are teaching your students to be creative, higher-level thinkers.