Chapter 6 Points of Interest

I was intrigued by this chapter. I love to incorporate movement in my teaching strategies. This chapter posed a lot of questions for me about movement. I think I have a general understanding of movement and the human body, but this chapter threw me some loops.

My first question and point of interest was where do you define the difference from just movement and dance. This was very confusing to me even after I read the definition of what 'dance' is. I still am having trouble with the differentiation with the two.

Dance seems to specify that there needs to be intent and choreography to be considered dance. While that is all fine and dandy, the 'creative movement' and eurythmics described in this chapter turn out to be dancing. Choreography is planning movements that fit with each other in context of the music and intent to move is giving a purpose to the movement being done. I am having trouble deciding what is plain movement, even if it is creative, and dancing.

I am not sure that it is such a big deal, but I feel that it is because the concepts I want to teach through 'dance' are not those that I want to teach through movement alone.

An observation I made about this chapter was that a lot of common sense is needed to be able to teach movement along with music. I found myself saying aloud, "Well duh!" at the book. Movement is one of the hardest concepts for the human body. I do not know why, but if you take a look at our sports and entertainment, physical roles of the human body are enhanced and pushed to their limit.

I felt like a big point of this chapter was to make motion and music connect and feel that they naturally fit together. Because music uses motion as a base to make sound (singers move wind over their vocal chords as well as facial expressions, string players bow, and wind players tongue and finger) it should be natural that movement should go hand in hand with music.

The last point that I found started me thinking about higher education and teaching dance. The book said that it was important that kids learn to move their bodies in conjunction with the music. The book also said that a great way to do this was to teach folk dances.

To further this thought, I think it almost necessary to teach older musicians how to dance classic dance forms like a jig (gigue), minuet, passpied, or salterello. I feel that teaching musicians these dance forms will help them perform better in general because they understand the movements that are associated with them. It is an interesting idea that I would be interested in perusing myself.

Lastly while on the dance topic, here are a few videos of some fantastic dancers from So You Think You Can Dance.

Billy Bell and Ade Obayomi (Contemporary)

Lauren Froederman and tWitch Boss (Hip Hop)

Robert Roldan and DTrix Sandoval (Hip Hop)

Kent Boyd and Allison Holker (Contemporary)

Travis Wall

Alex Wong and Allison Holker