Dance Your ROOTS: October 2012

Dance Your Roots

A solid root structure

permits and encourages steady, safe growth.

Improvisation and Authentic Movement

Holistic Arts Program

Improving self esteem & developing a healthy, positive body image.

Our Roots sustain us, ground us and support us. Dance Your Roots encourages creativity, honesty, trust, responsibility, and community through the art of movement.

Becoming a healthy, strong teenager requires developing a natural relationship with our bodies through:

Self Awareness, Acceptance and Non-Judgement.

Elements explored in the classroom:

Body/Mind Connection

Journaling

Meditation

Music

Breath Work

Honing the natural rhythm's of our bodies, students will explore their bodies as powerful, energetic beings to combat the stress of growing pains and societal expectations. Being yourself is often the simplest, yet hardest task at this age.

Tree roots can be symbolic either of feeling "rooted" in one spot, stagnant and unable to move, or the roots may "run deep" indicating a sense of stability and the ability to find physical, mental and spiritual nourishment. Trees that are uprooted can symbolize feelings of chaos, disarray, despair, or instability.

If we have no foundation upon which to depend for direction, focus, and stability, we have to develop our own. Being true to one's self is essential to our growth.

Students will use Authentic Movement, Improvisation and Composition to create and express the stories of their bodies landscapes and life's stories.

Dance Improvisation & Authentic Movement

Dance Improvisation places the emphasis on the imagination and the symbolic nature of images. Taking the natural every day movement of your body and expanding on it through impulse and intention, dancers explore their own bodies in a relaxed state of being, finding deeper communication between the mind and the body. By building awareness of one's movement an individual can then make clear, conscious movement choices. Not only can a dancer sense new movement possibilities, they can free themselves of habitual ways of moving. By seeing and feeling, we will explore listening to our bodies and expand on our experience of moving, noticing how we generate movement and what gives us reason to act. We will work as individuals and in groups, to expand our awareness of our direction and space. We will focus on free improvisation and advance to structured improvisation, including meditation and yoga for relaxation and tension release.

Dance Composition

This course is designed to give the student a broad introduction to dance composition. The approach for the course is based on the idea of introducing and developing tools for the dance makers ‘toolbox’, that each student can make use of in the service of finding their own choreographic voice and style. In addition, the philosophical approach will emphasize rediscovering a sense of play in finding and applying these ‘tools’, the freedom to experiment without internal judgments short circuiting creative exploration.

Students will learn to generate and manipulate movement through exercises and improvisation, and will expand those skills into shaping dances. Areas to be explored include elements of movement, music, narrative, group work and site specific work.

Journaling

Journals will be a composite of assignments and reflections that show a deep understanding for the personal topics in this course. The assignments range from written response essays to drawings and free writes. The topics will be centered around the course’s theme of the body, mind/body connection, personal stories, and self reflection.