by Amanda Chiado, SI 2018

On October 8th I had the great pleasure of facilitating a Practitioner Exchange on Dance & Writing with the Luna Dance Institute following a year-long inquiry project which began in the Summer Institute 2018.

The PX was totally rejuvenating!  It is so important to connect with others who are working in your field.  We all shared ideas related to our creative and teaching practices. Participants discussed dance as a way to tap out of abstraction and into the body.  For example, students can dance verbs instead of doing a worksheet. Capitalizing on opportunities to connect language to the body is essential to learning.  We discussed the challenge of students growing both in dance and writing simultaneously, but determined that there can be a dialogue and fluidity between these two content areas that elevates them both.

We could have talked much longer, but here are some of the highlights:

• Creating dance sequences alongside exploring writing structure can help students learn beginning, middle and end, motifs, and revising and editing.  
• Don’t forget a student can be assessed on content knowledge by doing a dance!  
• Units centered on relevant topics that incorporate dance are powerful, such as a Dreamers Unit or a Borders & Boundaries Unit.  
• Students can dance quotes, and journal about dancing.  
• Dance the Pledge of Allegiance to engage students in a writing piece we are all familiar with.
• They can write a poem about Fibonacci and the dance of mathematics.
• Teaching is most engaging when we are trying new ideas, and when the content is student lead.  What are students interested in and what is affecting them? Depending on the age of the students, topics can range from pirates to climate change.
• Integrated approaches to creativity support health and well-being, coping strategies, self-regulation and liberation.
• It is important to observe reflect, and evaluate and this goes for you and the students.
• Working backward in your planning to creates systematic learning opportunities. 

Our conversation too, was like a dance that moves with meaning and feeling, and even a poem that flows and connects.  I really appreciated the sharing of ideas, and the dedication of the group to creating meaningful experiences for their students that incorporate dance or are driven by dance.  I came away swirling with thoughts and an affirmation of my deep commitment to my practice. Can we dance to Mad Libs? Let’s try it!

The final image that lingered on for me following our exchange was the Cinnamon Roll.  Part of the conversation entailed an experience of dancing as a cinnamon roll, and using the descriptive language connected to the delicious treat as a way to engage in the dance.  This image stays with me not just because I love food, but because it’s a concrete object that we can investigate, and use to inform our dancing and inform our writing. The delicate steam, twist and roll, the sticky, and doughy are all words that live boldly in the body.  Become the cinnamon roll!

Amanda Chiado is writer, teacher and arts advocate. She is the Director of Arts Education for the San Benito County Arts Council and is an active California Poet in the Schools.

Facilitator Victoria Albaracin and participant Aiano Nakagawa reflect on the September 10, 2019 Practitioner Exchange: Creating Space for Child-centered Work

From Victoria: I love how a community, who does not know each other personally, can come together to discuss  different topics and then brainstorm ideas to deeper our practice and pedagogy. I think we have a unique opportunity as educators to collaborate and learn from one another that we might not get in our normal teaching communities. This exchange for me was especially valuable because I am still growing as a dance educator and finding more ways to integrate into my general education classroom. I’m super excited because I’m taking over the dance program for kindergarten at my school and I plan on using the ideas that were shared during our exchange, and I feel like we have a community that can continue to share with one another outside of the Practitioner Exchange. 

From Aiano: One major question that came up was: What is the role of the teacher and in true-child centered play? We reminded ourselves that the teacher is not the center. It can feel destabilizing to stand back, like you’re not doing anything as the teacher, when, in many cases, that’s the best thing you can do. Especially in dance, we sometimes feel we have to prove we are teaching/educating, so we take more power/control over the class than necessary. It was validating to hear and agree that stepping back and letting children be is important – and essential – to their development and growth. From this place we can watch children’s own interests and inquiries reveal themselves, and as we listen deeply and ask questions, a new curriculum, one led by our students, can emerge.

Victoria Albaracin is a kindergarten teacher and newly self-identified dance educator at Ascend Elementary School in Oakland, CA. 

by Kristin Burke

Some conversation take-aways & tips

As early childhood dance teachers, we find richness in classroom transitions as opportunities to use dance. Transition dances can include freeze/copy/movement dance or song with added motions. Simple dance movements (such as marching, tip-toe, etc) can also be used to transition from one physical space to another.

To support the needs of each child, try  turning your “teacher request” into a goal that is something interesting or a fun challenge; this is especially helpful for 4-to 5-year-olds. Children, especially young ones, benefit from proprioception feedback and activating their vestibular system. Activities to help students in need of more touch include tug of war, tension, feel their bodies, “body surfing” for contact/touch.

As educators and dance advocates, we find it is necessary, and sometimes challenging, to find ways to distinguish dance time from other times in the classroom. In the classroom, perception of safety is critical. Dance time has different rules than other times of the day. A dance “container” can be established by holding a ritual at the beginning of the dance time, with the teacher reminding students that this is a special time for dancing and that dancing has different rules than classroom time. A simple sound (bell) or light cue can also serve as a transition to dance time.

Storytime is a great opportunity to use movement and integrate dance into “non dance” times.  Books such as From Head to Toe and Barnyard Dance are good resources. Free dance can be used with children as a way to encourage and invite children to stay in their bodies. Music ideas for dance include movie soundtracks and anything instrumental or dramatic.

Kristin Burke is a lead teacher with Urban Montessori Charter School. True to Maria Montessori’s vision, Kristin feels committed to education that begins in the body and reveals itself through purposeful, connected, and creative movement. 

by Lisbeth Woodington

Preparing for the Practitioner Exchange with my Summer Institute colleague Mershon Illgner was a constructive, self-reflective process. The exchange provided us with the opportunity to share ideas and to think collaboratively about our teaching practices. All educators – teachers, teaching artists and administrators – need the consistent practice of self-reflection, in order to remain self-aware, sensitive and present. That said, this ties in well with the topic we addressed in our exchange, Documentation and Dance. We prepared guiding questions and gathered images from our own lessons/experiences around documentation and dance. However, we remained open to the possibility that the conversation might take other directions, as often happens with an inquiry-based approach to learning.

One of the big takeaways from the exchange was that in order to bring documentation into dance, a habit needs to be created; documentation should be something that students can come to expect from every session. Once the habit of mind is there, the space is then created for students to make documentation their own. Ultimately, a central goal for educators is to witness their students using tools for their learning and creativity with independence and agency. Another point that looped through the conversation, the idea of documentation as a process and not solely as an artifact. An artifact, whether it be a photograph, drawing, video, audio recording, etc., is the result of documentation, and often a beautiful result, but standing alone, they are not documentation. Documentation is a process and those artifacts are elements that speak of our process.

Overall, both of us walked away from the exchange with a deeper understanding of why and how we can use documentation in dance and other areas of student learning. Equally as important, co-facilitating the Practitioner Exchange was a reminder: it is invaluable to have colleagues that are mirrors and windows through which to see our pedagogical and creative practices.

by Natalie Ashby

In today’s climate it is essential that young people have the means to speak their mind through diverse modes of communication. I have witnessed the sense of empowerment that students experience when they have a performative space, a stage, studio or podium, on which to discover, write, rehearse, perform and speak their truth. When dance and writing are partnered, students integrate these modes of communication in unique processes of inquiry, exploration and sense-making.

On January 15th, Katrina Deans and I led a Practitioner Exchange at Luna Dance where we discussed the intersections between dance and writing. We were joined virtually by Amanda Chiado, a dance teaching artist from Hollister, CA and by Luna staff, Deborah Karp and Aiano Nakagawa.

Throughout the hour and a half discussion, our conversation meandered from abstract discussion of why writing and dance to concrete discussion of strategies and ideas for our classrooms.

Through our conversation we realized that a partnership between writing and dance offers collaborative opportunities for students and processes of mutual sense-making. We discussed how a student might move to a poem written by another student, or witness a student’s movement and draft a written interpretation of meaning. Such processes create rich source material for students to pull from when they are “stuck” in either the writing or the choreographic process. They also provide opportunities for students to realize that the meaning we make of movement or writing is subjective, and that meaning can change when viewed through a different lens, whether choreographic or literary.

Writing and dance also offer potential for integrating curricular and thematic material. We discussed our own experiences integrating writing, curricular content and dance. When Katrina learned that all of the students in one of her studio classes were studying the solar system, she used this content as source material for a dance piece that incorporated students’ written work. She encourages her older students to speak their truth by writing and then incorporating the writing in movement compositions. Amanda is exploring weather with her Kindergarteners through poetic compositions and movement. I am contemplating how my third graders can explore our Graduate Profile learning traits though movement and writing.

The Practitioner Exchange was an informative and inspiring platform to connect with colleagues who have similar pedagogical interests but work in different environments. As we each shared our ideas and expertise, we were able to collaborate, brainstorm and learn from one another’s diverse experiences. As a classroom teacher, sharing ideas with dance teaching artists helped me see new opportunities for writing and dance that I would not have discovered from my perspective in the classroom. I feel invigorated and ready with plans for exploring embodied writing and movement with my third graders.

by Eden Flynn

I recently co-facilitated/participated in a Luna Dance Practitioner Exchange with a small group of dance educators on a topic near and dear to my heart: Nature-based Dance Curriculum. 

Just before the meeting I was reflecting on how this topic emerged. During the year-end meeting for the 2016 Luna Dance Summer Institute alumni, we were sharing our “take-aways” from the teaching year, and I shared how my focus on nature-based curricula developed over the course of the year. 

The early part of my teaching year was inspired by what I had learned over the summer and I spent most of my classes broadly honing my own translation of the Luna style/approach to teaching the elements of dance. However, during the winter, the three schools where I worked were closed for over a month due to the Thomas fire that began in Ojai and continued throughout Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties for several months after. When the schools re-opened and I went back to teaching my classes, without even realizing it, I began to focus much more on nature-based themes and the students seemed to engage with a renewed sense of enthusiasm. 

In retrospect, I don’t know if what I perceived as the students’ renewed enthusiasm was just due to being back in their hometown and returning to the rhythm and routine of their post-fire lives; or if their enthusiasm was actually inspired by the nature-based themes of our dance-making. Possibly both. Either way, it inspired me to want to go deeper into exploring our interconnectedness with nature through the medium of dance. 

I primarily teach creative dance with TKs, Kindergarteners, and first graders. I’ve noticed that they tend to instinctively be attuned to nature. What I mean by nature could include something as small as a patch of grass growing out of a crack in the sidewalk, a bird chirping by the window, or a cool breeze blowing the leaves.  In my experience, young learners seem to notice these details more readily, as well as the bigger more prominent parts of nature—mountains, trees, cloud formations, thunder storms, etc.. 

After the fire, my students’ reflections on nature during our dance classes seemed to be even more astute and enthusiastic. Whether or not we explicitly talked about it, all of our lives had been uprooted due to the forces of nature. Some of their friends had lost their homes permanently and had not yet returned to school because they were still displaced. Many who had returned had to stay indoors for weeks due to the dangerous air quality. So in my mind, there was a heightened sense of awareness of how powerful nature is and how much we tend to take for granted the simple things, like being able to go outside to play, to touch the leaves and see the trees, to breath the air, splash in the puddles, see the stars in the sky at night. At the same time, as the earth began to recover from the fire, we were watching nature renew and re-emerge in a way that we hadn’t seen before. 

It has been about one year since the Thomas fire. California has experienced several more subsequent wildfires, and sadly, during the time of our Practitioner Exchange, there were two more fires raging again in Ventura County and further South, as well as the devastating Paraside fire. I mention this because, with the increasing intensity and number of fires, the conversation about climate change and global warming felt essential. The health of our planet, the health of our students health, as well as our own health, was a large part of the conversation around “nature-based curriculum in dance education”. 

With many of our students experiencing the effects first hand—their schools closing, terrible air quality, having to evacuate, and in many cases losing their homes, we talked about how we might use dance education as a way to process some of this. We discussed how, as educators, it is our responsibility to create spaces of learning for students to share, discuss, problematize, and contextualize what’s happening in their worlds. These conversations might be different for students in urban settings than students in rural settings, and differences depending on access to nature and socioeconomic backgrounds. Yet, we pointed to the shared experience of being part of nature regardless of much of how little or how much of it that surrounds us.  

I realize nature is only one topic among so many others that might be on our students minds at any given moment. But for me personally, it feels pressing for children and educators to be collaboratively thinking through some of the concerns facing our planet, hopefully in ways that are empowering and creative.

One of the many wonderful things about having dance as a medium to address such issues is that it allows us to literally “move” energy, express our feelings, fears and ideas in creative and constructive ways. Intellectualizing and thinking through issues is of course essential, but if we don’t move our bodies in the process, we run the risk of getting weighed down by it all. Also, as I alluded to earlier, there’s something very inspiring about watching nature re-new herself. When we observe all the changes that occur in nature, there are so many life-lessons to draw from for developing nature-based curriculum.  

Questions that came up during the Practitioner Exchange included: How do we use dance to remind ourselves and our students to stay attuned to the nature that is around us (the sky, the sun, the rain, the birds, the leaves), and to the ways that we are part of nature?  How do we do this in urban areas with limited access to nature? How can this awareness of our connection with nature could be supported by dance with the older students? We discussed some of the logistical barriers to dancing outdoors with our students given that most of the time we are in classroom settings.

A shared interest among those of us in the group, was how to connect nature-based dance education with environmental justice and social action. We shared ideas about potential collaborations with other teachers in the natural and biological sciences and other subject areas, as well as with community organizations, and even, very ambitiously, other youth groups who might concerned about and experiencing the affects of climate change in their geographical locations. 

Ultimately, what stands out the most in my mind, is how dance education can both cultivate a sense of awe, wonder and joy around our interconnectedness with nature, as well as catalyze action around our legitimate concerns and need to collaboratively problem-solve around the issues currently facing our planet.  

Eden Flynn has been teaching creative dance with children and various other forms of dance with adults for many years. She created a movement arts program called Heartbeats Dance which combines creative dance, yoga and mindfulness in the classroom. She primarily teaches ECE, Kindergarten, and First grades in Ojai California public schools, as well as mixed ages in enrichment programs. She is an Alumna of the Luna Dance SI program, 2016. 

by Emily Ban

On October 9th, a small but mighty group of dance educators gathered at Luna for the Practitioner Exchange on “Policing and Releasing the Student Body.” Facilitating virtually from my home in Brooklyn, we started with me sharing what I mean when I talk about “policing the body.” While I currently teach dance at a decidedly humanist public school, I spent the past two years developing a creative dance program at a “no excuses” charter elementary school in Minneapolis, where it felt that the school’s top prioritized values were teacher control and student compliance. Because these values were paired with highly rigid ideas about what engagement looks like, students were constantly reminded that tall, straight backs, pinkies glued to desks, and feet flat on floor were prerequisites for learning. My students, about 98% of whom were students of color and 93% of whom received free/reduced price lunch, practiced a four-step process for standing up from their seats over and over until the entire class executed the sequence is militaristic unison. My kindergarteners might practice walking silently in the hall with their arms glued tightly to their sides three times before getting it perfectly and finally heading to recess. I shared these glimpses into my old school as an example of the ways we police certain students’ bodies in the name of safety, high expectations, and efficiency.

I shared the questions this experience raised in me: Whose bodies do we police in these ways in schools? What implicit lessons are we teaching students about their abilities, their agency, their value and their worth? Lastly, I shared a glimpse into the challenges of attempting to carve out a time and space that operated differently within my school – a space where students could choose how to move and create beautiful things with their bodies, all while making decisions themselves about how to stay safe.

From there, each participant shared their own complex, insightful experiences with control and compliance, agency and creative freedom. One participant shared the idea that dance education ideally exists within “a container that makes it safe to take risks.” Several participants agreed, though added on that so often it is challenging to hold that kind of container sacred within a school or institution where risk-taking is not antithetical to the overwhelming culture of compliance and control. Our conversation largely questioned how we as dance educators navigate the opposing forces of freedom and control, agency and structure.

One particularly interesting thread of conversation examined the concept of “freezing” within the creative dance context. We listed reasons why finding stillness and quiet might be integral to dance curriculum (stillness is a key facet of time, rhythm, phrase-making, etc.) and helpful for managing the flow of a lesson (a pause to provide the next prompt, to push ideas further, to remind about using our eyes to find empty space, etc.). However, we also surfaced concerns about the power dynamics of demanding that students freeze on cue and the potentially problematic associations with police officers yelling “freeze.” We questioned, “who has the right to say ‘freeze?’” As often happens in these conversations, one question led to another, and by the end of our time together we landed on a few that are still echoing for me: What does it mean to try and release or free someone else’s body? Is that different from granting permission to access one’s own freedom? Who are the gatekeepers of freedom?”

Emily Ban is a NYC-based dance educator and Luna SI alum who has previously developed a creative dance program within a “no excuses” charter school, taught ESL in France, and managed community education programs at a dance non-profit. She holds a BA in Dance and French from Carleton College and an Ed.M. in Arts in Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.