Week 2: Designing Workshop #1 and Workshop #2

Having settled upon DNA as my topic of choice to base my workshops on, I next needed to create some workshop ideas. This proved easy enough, because some of my rehearsal exercises that I had done with my dancers last fall were essentially workshops that could be tweaked for use as educational tools.

DNA Helix

My first idea centered on an exercise that used recognizable and non-recognizable images of DNA. When I had presented these images to my dancers last fall, my intention was for them to create a small movement phrase inspired by each image, but nothing more. Now, my intent with this exercise within the context of my MAP took on a larger scale. One of my goals in designing these movement-based workshops is to use and allow art as education and illumination. The practices involved in creating and learning dance has many similarities with discoveries done in science. The need to observe, to experiment, to be creative, to be safe, and to synthesize information is done in both disciplines. So, if we are to look at a scientific concept, the same way we look at art, perhaps this could allow for a more inclined desire to understand DNA.

Gel electrophoresis

Chemical Structure of DNA

Crystallized DNA

Genetic code

So I started with the same five images. I would start with the first and include an exercise that Celeste had advised me to utilize. “Sketch-and-label” consists of taking an image and performing an investigation, of sorts, on it. The individual sketched the image on a sheet of paper and labels it in a way that asks questions and clarifies information that cannot be made apparent with the sketch. These exercises can last 10 minutes or an hour. Celeste gave me a brief 1-minute demonstration as she explained the exercise to me, and I understood right away its details. I would incorporate this exercise after I had presented each image, and allow the dancers 5 minutes to sketch and label. This would give them an opportunity to observe the images in greater detail and inherently prepare themselves for the next step of the exercise, which consisted of writing out characteristics, properties, and descriptions of each respective image. These short descriptions would be the basis for movement phrases. After repeating these steps with each image, the dancers would have 5 short movement phrases that could be combined into one long phrase.

In this workshop, I wanted for the dancers to gain a sense of curiosity and grasp for these beautiful, but very scientific and, perhaps, foreign images. Seeing as how DNA is a force of nature, many of its properties are inherently obvious. If this can be learned through the body rather than through a textbook, doesn’t this information become internalized and retained? Can this be a way to recognize how the simple can be complex, and how the complex can, therefore, be simple.

My other idea, that would form the basis for Workshop #2, originated from my desire to pose the topic of DNA, through text, in the simplest way possible. The first place I turned to was the dictionary. What could be simpler than a single sentence that concisely explains the definition of DNA?

“Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is a nucleic acid containing the genetic instructions used in the development and functioning of all known living organisms.”

To anyone who hasn’t looked at anything having to do with biology since high school, even this sentence packs a punch. But here, my intention is for individuals to look at definitions and ignore the words that are long and foreign, and instead look at what’s familiar. In this case I based the workshop off of 4 parts of the definition. I had the dancers look at:

1.     Contain

2.     Instructions

3.     Development of all known living organisms

4.     Growth of all known living organisms

These four sections would be the basis for four movement phrases done in a group that would result in a longer, group choreographed dance.

With this workshop, I am hoping that individuals can use this experience as a way to look at scientific articles and information that they hear on the news, radio and other places in the future, and decipher what they do understand rather than focusing on what they don’t understand. In doing so, the intimidating quality that may befall on an individual upon first hearing or being introduced to this new information dissolves. And perhaps a feeling of empowerment can ensue, all from creating movement off of the simplest parts of a definition, and synthesizing and associating these words to the role of DNA.