It is expected and understood that dance will be experienced as a complete art form more by some than by others; but, as every child has a right to a box of crayons and some basic instruction in drawing and use of colour, so every child has a right to know how to achieve control of the body to use it for his/her expressions in life. The definition of the very common term dance, in this context, is movement — the first and the deepest language we ever know.
Dance, over the last few decades, has grown beyond being a hobby and gained vitality enough to be integrated in education. Sutradhar, the non-profit educational resource centre that has consistently brought together artists, storytellers, teachers, books and toys to weave colour and texture into the educational experiences presented “Dance in Education”, a day-long workshop at the Indian Social Institute, Bangalore.
The workshop, conducted by Tripura Kashyap, choreographer and movement therapist from Delhi, gradually unfolded the concept of using dance as a medium to teach children.
Learning is experiencing
The group of 30 participants consisting of special educators, corporate trainers, teachers from a rural school, theatre artists and of course, dancers were taken through an entire exploration through movement. The participants tuned themselves with a warm up and an introduction with a movement signature. Following that, was a series of activities to create awareness of Movement Qualities proposed by Rudolf Laban’s framework for creative dance viz. flow, space, time and weight. The group then sat to go over the theory and technique behind fluttering their colourful dupattas and moving blindfolded in space to a variety of music.
While the first half of the workshop was to do with the craft of movement, the second half went on to develop movement activities for concepts taught in school. It started with a simple poem narration and limbered its way up to depict a complete water cycle through movement. Counting in ascending and descending order seemed effortless when the feet accompanied simple footwork. The group coordination activities gave an opportunity to assume different roles such as leading, following, conforming and mediating in a team.
“Dance in education is a concept that has been evolving over the last three years. It started off as a creative consultation to enable dancers to reach out to schools and later developed into a module. Working in different disciplines such as choreography, therapy and teaching with an overlap of the core, dance, keeps me motivated. It teaches content and time management and also keeps me seeking for newer pastures,” says Tripura Kashyap.
She also excitedly shares about FCAT, a foundation course on creative arts therapies by SMART (Studio for Movement Arts and Therapies, Bangalore).
The growing consciousness of the body is so often crushed as the world around us makes increasing demands on the development of the intellect. The body must not get left behind as a phenomenon – separate and primitive.
