4.) Form and Meaning

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Introduction:

Last session the class examined intrinsic and extrinsic elements of dance and movement, and made lists of intrinsic and extrinsic elements for two video clips.   The class also considered what information and ideas they bring to watching dance and movement and the source of those ideas (popular culture, age, gender, class, and the like). Today, students share the one-minute dance or movement studies created as homework after Session Three.  Observers will discuss intrinsic and extrinsic elements viewed using the word lists created in session three. A discussion based on choreographic choices made will ensue and lead to the introduction and exploration of new terms – form and meaning. Through another set of video clip viewings, we will examine socio-cultural reasons for beauty in dance and movement.

 

Classroom activities:

• In pairs, share the one-minute dance or movement studies.  Invite each pair to share their study two times. Facilitate a discussion that includes the following guiding questions: 

  • Why did you make the choices you did?
  • What are you exposed to in your everyday life that influenced these choices? What are you not exposed to?
  • Whose judgment matters to you? Whose doesn't?
  • In your everyday lives, what different "movement personas" do you take on? (i.e. when you walk down the street (does this change in different neighborhoods?), sit it in a class, sit at the dinner table, dance, dance in one setting versus another, etc.)
  • Why do your movement choices change in different circumstances?
• The reasons given for changing movement choices according to context answer the question: How does one discern the meaning of a dance?  In order to determine meaning, look at context.  Make deliberate connections of the movement or dance studies shared with Sklar’s article, “Five Premises for a Culturally Sensitive Approach to Dance.” 
• Shift the discussion to the contexts of the Madonna and Rennie Harris videos. Ask: How does the context give clues to the meaning of the dances? How does the form give clues to the meaning of the dances?
• Read aloud to the class: Schechner, Richard. "Points of Contact Between Anthropological and Theatrical Thought," Between Theater and Anthropology. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1985: 11.
• Explain that the best descriptive writing relies on action verbs, and secondarily on metaphors and adjectives. Refer to the lexicon developed in class as containing action verbs, metaphors, and adjectives and to students' essays on their movement memories as they relate to good descriptive writing.

• Facilitate a discussion that invites the learners to consider the movement choices made in their dance or movement studies and how these movement choices embody their own cultural contexts and values.

 

Closing:

To close class, discuss how the terms form and meaning help to give purpose in a dance or movement study; that forms and meanings are multiple and dependent on socio-cultural norms, values and beliefs.

 

Homework:

• In preparation for Session Five, read Miner, H. (1956). “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema” and prepare two questions for further discussion in the next session. 

 

• Start
• Primary Sources
• 1.) Personal Views of Beauty in Dance and Movement
• 2.) Differences and Preferences About Beauty in Dance and Movement
• 3.) Making a Lexicon - Observation of Intrinsic Elements
• 4.) Form and Meaning
• 5.) Making the Familiar Strange and the Strange Familiar
• 6.) Comparing Ballet as a Form of Ethnic (Classical) Dance with Bharata Natyam
• 7-8.) Group Project Progress Reporting
• 9.) Creating Ideals of Beauty through Dance and Movement


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