HUMANITIES CONNECTIONS
Episode Summary - Vocabulary - Works Consulted - Teacher Response Form

Dance Basics

Episode Summary

Teacher Tape

• Overview of the series. What's the first thing you notice about a dance performance? It's ok for different people to notice different things. Dance is like a code... to understand the code is to understand the worldview of the dancers, and speak the language of movement. Difference in western and non-western views of dance. Dance as and artistic language. Responding to dance... movement is contagious. Project idea: kids recreate a "kid song" using gestures they remember from elementary school.
  


• (teacher-student audience) History of dance. A slideshow which chronicles the development of ballet from the Middle Ages through commedia del' arte to the founding of the danse d'ecole, or school of classical dance. (may work for student audience if teacher wishes.)
  
  
• Understanding the teamwork required for production. Interview with Tonya Harper, Lighting Director and Stage Manager of the Lexington Ballet. Tchainkovsky and Petipa: composer/choreographer team of the original Nutracker. Ideas about the importance of the collaboration between choreographer and composer. Ways Petipa's choreography redefined ballet. Project idea: experimenting with music and choreography. Footage of teacher Patti Bringham and her class at Lexington's School for Performing Arts.

Student Tape

• Through The Nutcracker we're learning to watch dance. Definition of choreography. Comparison between dance and basketball. The elements of dance: space, force, and time. Space is important in both dance and basketball. Ways we see the element of space in dance. The element of force and how we see it in dance. Time is another element of dance we clearly see in basketball. Ways we see the element of time in dance. Rebecca Ratliffe of the Lexington Ballet does a "play by play" of a portion of The Nutcracker, in which she points out the elements of time, space, and force. Students will use The Nutcracker to identify the concepts we're learning. Overview and cuts from Act 1 of The Nutcracker. Definition and illustration of mime. Definition and Illustration of locomotor and non- locomotor movements.
  
  
• Getting into The Nutcracker. Rebecca Ratliffe explains the concept of pas de deux and does a voice over telling students what they should be seeing. Defines divertissements and does a voice over telling students what she would like them to notice in her own performance of the Arabian Dancer. This section ends with a (15:00) portion of Act 2 of The Nutcracker. Wrap up of the performance. Before we move on to the final cut of The Nutcracker we look at dance in more depth. There are hundreds of productions of this dance, and in each the choreography is different, according to the style of the choreographer and abilities of the dancers. Students see a clip of three passages from The Nutcracker and compare the stules of two choreographers. Clip one: Parent dance, Balanchine version, Lexington Ballet version; Clip two: Waltz of the Snowflakes, version one, version two; Chinese Dancer, version one, version two. Discussion -- what did you see? The point: The more you watch dance, the more you see in it. Finally, students watch the last section of The Nutcracker.