Galaxy's First Time At Grinnell

A week after trying out my workshops with the Dance Ensemble, I delivered Workshop #1 to a group of students who are part of a local afterschool program at Grinnell College. They arrived about 20 minutes late, which made things a little more difficult to carry out as was planned, seeing how we only had less than an hour to begin with. But in they came, with eyes big as saucers, slightly curled into their bodies, shielding themselves from the foreign space that is our dance studio. But all of the Dance Ensemble members were intent on creating as safe and welcoming a space as possible from the moment we formed a giant circle to begin introductions. 

After a series a warm ups that allowed the kids to understand our approach to dance and what “creative movement” is, we allowed them to explore a little bit in their bodies, and figure out ways they could move and perhaps, ways they couldn’t. Still a little in shock by the whole situation, they nevertheless appeared more than willing to be thrown into this new environment with a new group of college students and for lack of a better phrase, “dance for joy”.

We split the kids up amongst the dance ensemble members, which made for groups of three to six students per dance ensemble leader, and allowed each group to choose from one of the five images that I had presented to the Dance Ensemble the week prior that they would want to investigate through movement. While I had intended to do a short version of “sketch and label”, Celeste and I figured to stick with movement in this case, given our limited amount of time. After every group had chosen an image they were off! 

In no time at all, everyone began to spew out observations and ideas of what the images were and what they looked like and threw themselves into creating movement phrases. Once every group seemed to have a substantial amount of material gathered together, we all showcased what we had made. Unfortunately, many of the kids’ parents were coming to pick them up during this sharing time, so groups quickly dissipated and some never got the opportunity to show their dance to everyone.

Something I took particular note of, during the warm-up exercises was how willing and tolerant the kids were by observing movement done by other kids, and using it themselves. As a dancer and part of a dance ensemble, I feel as though we try and challenge ourselves to come up with our own movement as much as possible. We hesitate in “copying” others, and seem almost embarrassed and forbidden to do so. On the contrary, the kids who used the “copying” technique not only used this as a fall back, but also as a way to investigate for themselves their own abilities and interests. If they found one movement appealing, they would repeat it, and some could do so just like the original and some then could put their own twist on it. On a divergent note, I think, as a dancer, it would be interesting to conduct some movement exercises or introductory moves based on this idea, the idea of taking one movement and copying it in whatever way the Dance Ensemble is able. Whether this means repetition or a variation of the movement, I think, as dancers, as choreographers, as students, and as teachers, we need to explore our movements, our abilities, and ourselves by understanding what it means to copy and what is means to model off of others and the nuances and variations involved.

We ended the time we had by reiterating that the images we had just looked at and danced about were DNA. While this probably went into some students’ ears and out the other, I hope this experience for them was a memorable. Even if DNA sounds familiar should they hear it again at home, in class, on the Internet, etc. perhaps they will be able to think back to this experience and potentially feel a sense of familiarity and of the material because they had interacted with it in this creative, movement-based way. From the movement phrases I saw performed at the end of our session, I saw and felt a sense of intent, joy, and curiosity. This was an opportunity for every child to have a voice and participate. While some, no doubt, were more vocal than others, it was an experience where, thanks to the encouragement and help of the dance ensemble leaders, all the kids could observe, analyze, move, and create. In what I saw, this was a true instance in which no child was left behind.