After reading a post on this very good blog http://studio180dance.com/blog/ I got inspired to write about improvising.
Improvising is a very important thing to teach and a very hard one too. It's one of those things that you have to enjoy doing yourself before you can share it. You also have to be ready, as a teacher, to try and fail a few times before getting it right.
It is important for three main reasons:
-Because it is the best creative tool and it is the best way to create new material. When you find yourself doing the same choreographies year after year maybe it is time to improvise.
-Because it is accessible to everyone.
-Because it can be used for a wide variety of things.
First timers are usually the hardest ones to teach as there is so much for them to discover. You have to convince and reassure them as they will feel very vulnerable. There are two very important rules in improvising:
-no self censoring
-no judging (yourself or others)
Setting an improvisation task requires to have an aim. Concentrating on this aim you can then create any tasks. The most simple one being something like:
lets cross the room (giving a beginning and an end) but we have to stay on the floor (imagine the ceiling is 30cm high).
The aim here is to discover levels (the level of the ceiling can change as we cross the room). We can do the same thing with quality of movement or rhythm, etc.
The aim can be as simple as wanting people to dance. The great thing about improvising is that anyone (I really mean anyone) can do it, if they're willing to. You just have to find ways to make people move.
You can react to something (picture, theme, poem, colour, etc)
You can tell a story
You can place body parts in the space
The possibilities are endless. The only thing you require is an open mind and a bit of imagination.
Every time I lead a creative class with first timers I improvise with them. It helps them feel less self conscious . It is often very rewarding to see people discover how much they like it.
For pros, I concentrate more on how to challenge them. They are used to improvising and they need new tasks and ideas to explore. Most of the time the aims are the same only the process of discovery changes.
As a professional dancer myself, I have rarely worked with a choreographer that hasn't created through improvising. Most choreographers use improvising as a creative tool.
Some will teach you a phrase or combination and then ask you to personalise it. The exploration the dancer goes through, to change the phrase, is an improvisation.
Some will set a task with which you can play.
Some will film you improvising on music and then pick up the movements from the video.
Improvisation is a subject that could be discussed forever. So many books have been written by so many experts. It is worth having a look at them if you're a novice. I would love to chat and exchange ideas on improvisation (tasks, games, etc) so feel free to comment.
Thursday 17 June 2010
Tuesday 1 June 2010
Teaching Teenagers
I have had the great pleasure to teach many teenagers and it is by far one of the most challenging things I have done. The challenge lays in many aspects.
The rare times I haven't enjoyed teaching teenagers was when they were forced to come to a dance workshop. I would arrive in a school and have to lead a creative workshop and find out that most of the students didn't know I was coming or had no wish to discover something new. At first I spent the whole workshop trying to get them to do something the way I had planned it but it never really worked. I would often end up with my voice and my energy gone and with a very poor result. I decided to change drastically what I was doing.
The most difficult thing is the beginning. Trying to have them face the same direction and then learn even a small exercise doesn't work. It is far more efficient to have them follow your lead and copy you as best they can. I include all the things I want them to do (weight transfer, pliés, using the breath, etc) but without really mentioning it. I never use any technical terms such as pliés, demi-pointes, etc.
The warm up is now very quick and energetic. A bit like dance on the verge of becoming fitness. I found as well that it is best not to bring attention to a single one of them to soon. So I avoid the "Let's watch Jessy cause she is doing it very well!" sort of thing (under 12 love doing that).
Once they are warm I usually start a creative task but I talk about it in very specific terms. The word "improvisation" doesn't really work. They find it very scary so I replace it by "Moving around" which may seems a bit degrading but it doesn't last long because once they get comfortable with the task I quickly tell them that what they are doing is improvising.
Obviously this is for teenage first timers. I am describing a one off workshop situation, not a group taught on a regular basis. Although I think quite a lot of things can be applied to both.
One of the major things with teens, whether new to dance or not, is the relationship that they have with their bodies, particularly girls. Their bodies are changing fast and they're not comfortable with all these new features. (hair, breasts, spots, etc) So I try not to give creative tasks that use the body as an instrument (measuring space with your limbs, folding unfolding your body into the space, writing your name, etc) but tasks that bring their attention to the outside world (reacting to a colour or picture, copying someone, expressing a feeling, etc).
I haven't had the chance yet to follow the same group for a long time. I have only done it twice, teaching in a dance school for future pros. The thing that I particularly enjoyed was their speed at learning everything. I was able to witness their progress during six months. Of course they were taught all day, everyday, so it is normal to progress fast. But it is something I started noticing in one off workshops as well. The notion (weigh, quality, rhythm, etc) I concentrated on during the workshop felt learnt, more so than with younger groups.
I find that when a teenager is willing to learn, he or she can do it faster than others. The younger ones are not ready yet. I really like Jean Piaget's stages (see Wikipedia) :
-Preoperational stage: from ages 2 to 7 Acquisition of motor skills. Children cannot conserve or use logical thinking.
-Concrete operational stage: from ages 7 to 12 children begin to think logically but are very concrete in their thinking. Children can now conceive and think logically but only with practical aids.
-Formal operational stage: from 12 onwards. Development of abstract reasoning. Children develop abstract thoughts and can easily conceive and think logically in their mind.
To finish I will just say that every time I look into studies about teenagers I find out more. It is a fascinating subject. I am not a specialist on the subject. Please leave some comments and share your experiences on teaching.
The rare times I haven't enjoyed teaching teenagers was when they were forced to come to a dance workshop. I would arrive in a school and have to lead a creative workshop and find out that most of the students didn't know I was coming or had no wish to discover something new. At first I spent the whole workshop trying to get them to do something the way I had planned it but it never really worked. I would often end up with my voice and my energy gone and with a very poor result. I decided to change drastically what I was doing.
The most difficult thing is the beginning. Trying to have them face the same direction and then learn even a small exercise doesn't work. It is far more efficient to have them follow your lead and copy you as best they can. I include all the things I want them to do (weight transfer, pliés, using the breath, etc) but without really mentioning it. I never use any technical terms such as pliés, demi-pointes, etc.
The warm up is now very quick and energetic. A bit like dance on the verge of becoming fitness. I found as well that it is best not to bring attention to a single one of them to soon. So I avoid the "Let's watch Jessy cause she is doing it very well!" sort of thing (under 12 love doing that).
Once they are warm I usually start a creative task but I talk about it in very specific terms. The word "improvisation" doesn't really work. They find it very scary so I replace it by "Moving around" which may seems a bit degrading but it doesn't last long because once they get comfortable with the task I quickly tell them that what they are doing is improvising.
Obviously this is for teenage first timers. I am describing a one off workshop situation, not a group taught on a regular basis. Although I think quite a lot of things can be applied to both.
One of the major things with teens, whether new to dance or not, is the relationship that they have with their bodies, particularly girls. Their bodies are changing fast and they're not comfortable with all these new features. (hair, breasts, spots, etc) So I try not to give creative tasks that use the body as an instrument (measuring space with your limbs, folding unfolding your body into the space, writing your name, etc) but tasks that bring their attention to the outside world (reacting to a colour or picture, copying someone, expressing a feeling, etc).
I haven't had the chance yet to follow the same group for a long time. I have only done it twice, teaching in a dance school for future pros. The thing that I particularly enjoyed was their speed at learning everything. I was able to witness their progress during six months. Of course they were taught all day, everyday, so it is normal to progress fast. But it is something I started noticing in one off workshops as well. The notion (weigh, quality, rhythm, etc) I concentrated on during the workshop felt learnt, more so than with younger groups.
I find that when a teenager is willing to learn, he or she can do it faster than others. The younger ones are not ready yet. I really like Jean Piaget's stages (see Wikipedia) :
-Preoperational stage: from ages 2 to 7 Acquisition of motor skills. Children cannot conserve or use logical thinking.
-Concrete operational stage: from ages 7 to 12 children begin to think logically but are very concrete in their thinking. Children can now conceive and think logically but only with practical aids.
-Formal operational stage: from 12 onwards. Development of abstract reasoning. Children develop abstract thoughts and can easily conceive and think logically in their mind.
To finish I will just say that every time I look into studies about teenagers I find out more. It is a fascinating subject. I am not a specialist on the subject. Please leave some comments and share your experiences on teaching.
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