2.) Differences and Preferences About Beauty in Dance and Movement

Introduction:

Last session the class examined personal preferences in movement and dance by viewing and discussing a set of video clips.  The class developed a lexicon of words related to movement and dance preferences, using visual and somatic modes to develop this descriptive language. Today, through discussion and collage-making, the class will examine socio-cultural reasons for their preferences including age, gender, and ethnicity.

Classroom activities:

Begin with a group discussion about the interviews: What kinds of dance or movement did the interviewees/informants prefer? Post lists based on the class’s findings, sorting them into kinds of dances, such as social (including popular and folk), presentational (including all kinds of stage dance), and ritual (including both religious and secular).  Note that some may overlap categories. Drill team, for example, is both presentational and ritual.

Next, ask what interviewees/informants found beautiful.  In response, underline or star items from previous list, adding where necessary.  Point out provocative ideas and patterns. Continue to ask questions:

  • On what do you think people base their preferences for one kind of movement over another? Are preferences gender-specific? Age specific? Culture-specific?
  • On what do people base their ideas of beauty? Are notions of beauty tied to gender? Age? Ethnicity?
  • Was there any relation between what people preferred and what they found beautiful? Explain.

In small groups, facilitate a discussion of personal preferences and differences. This discussion prepares students to make a collage exploring these ideas. Ask learners to discuss the words “difference” and “preference,” recording their ideas. Ask small group members to discuss the following questions:

  • What are your own preferences in looking at movement, both in every day life and in special events? [Encourage students to remember the first day's video viewings.]
  • Do your preferences correspond with what you find beautiful?
  • What qualities, body types, or movement styles are you attracted to, even if you don't find them beautiful?
  • What qualities and styles do you emulate? Does your own movement style change in different circumstances? (e.g., in school, at a dance club, at the family dinner table, on the street, playing sports). Do you think it is possible to change your ideas about beauty? How might you do this?

Post each group’s responses in the classroom to reflect on and discuss.  Note the similarities and differences in thinking and valuing among groups and individuals.

Using magazines, make collages focused on the concept of beauty. Encourage students to include images they find beautiful and those they find ugly, powerful, seductive, and the like.  Let the collage-making lead to asking questions about beauty and its opposites, and to investigating what attracts and repels them.  Feel free to include words in the collage.

Invite students to engage in a five minute free-write on your collage-making process.

If there is time, facilitate whole group discussion about discoveries and new thinking.

 

Closing:

To close this session, note that a socio-cultural lens was used to examine the dance and movement discussed through the interviews. By making collages and reflecting on them in writing, the class examined their own perspectives on beauty in dance and movement.

 

Homework:

• Write a one page essay on your process of making a collage.  What did you do?  Why did you do it?  Explain your choices in relation to class viewings and discussion, illustrating those choices with some description of the images and juxtapositions in your collage. 

 

contents header
contents header
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •