Linda Bair Dance Company: Directions, Shapes, Dance Ensemble


Linda Bair in the background. Sarah Gould and Alexandria Griffith in the foreground.

Linda Bair Dance Company was on residence at the University of Miami from the 10th to the 14th of September. During their visit to the university, they shared their work with the Education in the Arts class. The students used the hallway in front of the classroom to engage with company members in a dance exercise.  They first warmed up, while the company's director and choreographer Linda  Bair, explained the peculiarities of doing a warm up with children.

After that, students used pedestrian movement to explore walking in different directions. They were divided in groups and began to explore how to put together movement to create a dance phrase. Finally, they had to adapt their phrase to a piece of music they chose. Once they completed their dance ensemble exercise, they went back to the classroom and shared their work with each other.

Following an introduction by Linda Bair, two members of the company presented to the class one of the pieces they later presented on September 15th, at Homestudio in Kendall, Miami.

Comments

  1. AllieSeptember 19, 2018 at 5:40 AM

    I appreciate that the professor is not afraid to give the students dance movements and assignments involving dance, even though the students themselves might not be involved in any sort of dance classes or have any experience. This might be similar to students in a younger classroom where Art or Dance is being taught. Experience is not a prerequisite to learning and appreciating dance.

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownSeptember 19, 2018 at 9:09 AM

    Sometimes people need to step out of their comfort zone and I think by having us get up and dance in class and interacting with the Linda Bar dance company helps do that. I am one of those students that likes to just sit in class and stay to myself but I truly enjoy being in a class where no one is being judged for standing up and making pedestrian movements in front of everyone.

    ReplyDelete
  3. UnknownSeptember 20, 2018 at 8:13 AM

    I really enjoyed participating in this class. All of my other classes require students to sit quietly and take notes. There is little room for creativity, so being able to move around in a class and try something different is a great experience. It is also really helpful to actually participate in the topics we discuss in class to see how it would execute in real life.

    ReplyDelete
  4. UnknownSeptember 23, 2018 at 4:43 PM

    This class was very engaging and encouraged everyone to participate and contribute their own ideas. It required students to quickly come together and think of dance steps corresponding to beats in a short amount of time. People developed more of an understanding of coordination of a large group with specific beats/movements.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mini-Lesson / Letter Writing and Mailing, Breathing, Algebra, and the Brain

Image
LETTER WRITING & MAILING   How to :   write a letter, turn a letter into a makeshift  envelope ,  & address an   envelope  for mailing   GRADE 3   DURATION OF LESSON: 15 minutes   SUBJECT:  Writing   OBJECTIVE S :   1)  Teach students  how to write a letter with  the 3 elements of a note/letter: greeting, message, farewell;  2)   Teach students to  fold a makeshift envelope out of an ordinary piece of paper for when they need to be resourceful / don’t have an envelope handy  but want to secure their note ;  3 )  Teach stu dents how to properly address a real  envelope they are sending by mail   MATERIALS:     Paper   Envelopes   Tape   Example of a properly addressed envelope   Example of a hand-fo lded/ makeshift envelope   STEPS:   Hand out paper  and ...
Read more

Existential Phenomenological Classroom: Story Telling

Image
The students were introduced to the concept of existential phenomenology . We discussed other importance concepts related to the subject. Bellow, there are presented some of the ideas that frame the existential phenomenological approach as a viable epistemological model to apply in the classroom. CONCEPTS   — Phenomenology : A philosophical “practice/method” of observing, recording, and interpreting “lived experience” through vivid and detailed descriptions. The practice of phenomenology seeks to expose, uncover, or reveal “universal” elements of human existence that structure our practical, “particular” empirical situations.  — Transcendental Phenomenology : Largely developed by Husserl, is a philosophical approach to qualitative research methodology seeking to understand human experience. — Existential Phenomenology : Whereas Husserl saw the task of transcendental phenomenology to be that o describing the lived world from the viewpoint of a detached observer,...
Read more

Integrating Dance: Moving Outside the Box

Image
Arts Integration: The Elements of Dance   (Video) After a lengthy discussion about the possible reasons why dance art is not considered an important subject in our culture, the students watched the video Arts Integration: the Elements of Dance (LINK ABOVE). The video emphasized the importance of using dance through the learning process of other subjects. The video introduces teacher Debra Kapp who explains in detail the different aspects of the process: Warm Up, Analysis and Reflection and Feedback. Based on the explanations given by the children it is evident that the process used by Kapp works. TAL students were then given a task: They were divided in groups, making sure they worked with students they had not worked with before. The groups had to brainstorm to come up with the idea they wanted to teach. Then the wrote the objective for that class. They agreed on the activities that would allow the students to learn the objective. They structur...
Read more