Key Concept:
Form
Related Concepts:
– Boundaries
– Interpretation
Global Context:
Personal and Cultural Expression
Statement of Inquiry:
The artist deliberately selects what and how to communicate through the content and the form of the artwork.
Inquiry Questions:
Factual – How did you experiment with artistic processes when creating your dance
Conceptual – In what way does form communicate content?
Debatable – Do we create our own boundaries?
Week 1: Lesson 1
Stimuli Definition:
Something that gives us inspiration, arouses us, make us feels energy and lastly breakthrough in ourselves.
Today was the first dance class in quarter 3, and we started it off by a commonly known game “A-E-I-O-U”. The game went like this, one person stand in front of white board with his/ her back facing us and the rest of us will stand far behind that person. Then when that one person said A-E-I-O-U, the rest of us had to run to him and try our best to touch him/ her, however we have to freeze when he/ she looked at us, otherwise he/ she can catch us! I learnt how to respond fast to any situation and always keep my five sense open to things, words and people around me.
After the fun activities we danced ‘What do you mean by Justin Bieber” , it was a Relationship dance. We learnt steps from Mr. King, our dance teacher.
Briefly our steps:
First at the beginning of the song we raise our tip toe and draw a circle in the air for the lyrics “what do you mean”, then we swing our left hand to the right and after that we swing right hand to the left and more. The paced of the dance is fast, therefore I have to adjust my responding skills fast and try my very best to dance the dance. Moreover, I have lots of fun and I felt satisfied when I conquered the dance steps!
Things that went well:
I managed to run away from all the catches from the one standing in front of whiteboard and I am able to react quick to the thing happening around me, I’m GLAD! Furthermore I managed to follow the paced of song and dance according to the beat, I am happy that I learnt the steps fast and evolve it into a dance of mine 🙂 which have my style in it. Everyone may be dancing the same steps, but the feelings each person gave audience will be different!
Things to improve:
I have improve my reacting skills and quickly adapt to different environment, steps. Otherwise I will never be able to learnt new skills and technique in dance, and I will limit myself in a small space and cannot develop myself a lot to be a good dancer! When I have to be quick, I need to tune my mood to happy and be energetic with steps, so I can adapt to the dance. When I have to be slow, I will need to tune my mood to emotional, so the dance will look sad and not awkward.
I learnt that stimuli is something like our responding skills, and we have to always pay attention to things happening around us. I also learnt how to dance with fast paced and be a quick learner by using skimming and scanning skills.
Week 1: Lesson 2
Today our class separated into two groups, and each of the group received a stimuli challenge from teacher. Our stimuli challenge is to create a dance from a poem that we can find at the library, while the other group have to dance a historical event out. My assigned group mate are Doris, Keith and Richard, I believes that we will survive this challenge together! After we received the challenge we moved down to the library and started our research. Basically we spend the whole day finding for a understandable poem and a song that relates to the poem.
Things that went well:
We found a poem named telephoning home and we decided on our song – Hello by Adele, which has remix, so it will be fast and energetic while emotional.
Week 2: Lesson 1
Today teacher taught us how to fully utilized our dance steps to different level which is High, Medium and Low. He taught us that when creating dance steps, it is better that we can try add different height, sometimes go high as if we can touched the sky; sometimes stay at normal level and sometimes go low like an earth worm. Through dancing different levels can give different elements to our dance, which makes it unique and shows its individuality!
First we learnt different steps from High, Medium and Low. High – dance movement with jumping / Medium – dance movement like normal / Low – dance movement that include roll, squat (basically the one that makes your legs pain…) Then we separate into two groups of three, and we have to dance the steps he taught just now without planned, see how sync we are with friends 🙂 Well, I have to say that not all of us are “connected” hahaha~ however a small part of us, sometimes do the same movement too. I have lots of fun and laughter in this lesson, thank you!
Other than High, Medium and Low, we also learnt a relationship dance from Mr. King. Why is it a relationship dance? Because the song “Sorry – Justin Bebier” is about relationship, haha~ okay, it’s not funny XD After the lesson, we started to choreograph dance steps for our Stimuli Challenge – “Telephoning Home”.
Week 2: Lesson 2
Today we learnt about “Rhythm and Beat”, so there will be 4 different counts, 1 count, 2 count, 3 count and 4 count. We will have to dance”Sorry- Justin Bieber” with this 4 different counts and same steps. So we start off with (1,2,3,4- 1,2,3,4), and we seems okay with, but as the counts get lesser we will be confused and mixed up with steps due to the unfamiliar to the steps. This activities also taught me that the counts of our steps will affect the pace of our dance. Below is the Hypothesis statement:
The lesser the counts are, the faster the pace of dance; the more the counts are, the slower the pace of dance.
Then we continue practice and choreograph the incomplete dance steps for our Stimuli Challenge. Basically I am only there listening and follow their steps, because I do not have any ideas in my mind. Therefore I decided that since I cannot be a leader today, I will be a good follower and I will give my best in dancing, cooperating!
Briefly our steps:
Things that went well:
The steps that we dance looks really emo and cool, and I have be a good follower. It is really good that we are able to create a dance steps from this song “Hello – Adele” and we cooperate well.
Things to improve:
I think I can improve on lessen the burden of choreographing dance steps from my teammates, I think it is time for me to learn how to be independent! I will learn from my teammates and teachers, learn the way they get inspired, the way they choreograph and strengthen myself into a better dancer.
Week 3: Lesson 1 (2 Feb 2016)
Today we get in touch with architecture of dance.
– solid, heavy
– Emotion shown through non-living things
-Extract emotion out of architecture
-Cannot be moved easily
Architecture dance need something solid and the background music is most likely to be classical, musical instruments. People dance through extracting emotions out of architecture. The dance is emotional and soft, you have to be like a ghost that can move around architecture. Mr. King placed all different materials together to become a architecture that was out of shape XD, then we have to try listen to the song “Bring me to life – Evanescence” and try to get the emo feelings on to the architectures… It was very fun~
After that, we practice the dance steps for Stimuli Challenge again and again, to make sure we all knew the steps.
Week 3: Lesson 2 (5 Feb 2016)
Today we performed Hello dance cover in front of Mr. King and our classmates. We wore modern clothes: girls wore white shirt with blue blouse and jeans, then boys wore black shirt and jeans. We practice with the costumes on for once, then we performed.
Things that went well:
I think our performance was emotional and we bring the song to life through suitable dance steps. I am glad that most of us remembered the steps and were able to performed it out with courage, because we did not get much time to practice as many things are going at the same time. Even though we made lots of mistakes but I am truly, deeply thankful to everyone who supports us and teach me the dance. In my opinion, we can improve more on our energy, confidence and communication. We should put more energy in our dance steps no matter it is an emotional song or energetic song, and we should believe more in ourselves, believe that we can performed this well!
From this dance performance, I learnt how to follow the leader and how to dance in different level. I learnt how to create dance steps from others and I need to be energetic when I dance, what ever style the dance is, otherwise the dance will look clumsy, instead of energetic. Lastly I would like to say thank you to everyone in the class for supporting us, cheer for us, and thanks for my group mates, without them I cannot stay alive T^T
Thank You, Sincerely, Jin En 😀
Week 4: Lesson 2 (12 Feb 2016)
HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR!! XD
As a Chinese I should be at my home celebrating this joyful new year with my family, and curdle in my bed… However I am a good student too, therefore I am here today at school and attend dance class… ==|||
Thanks to Chinese New Year, today only four people attended the dance class, Richard, Sato, Jarrod and me (GOOD STUDENTS ><). Even though half of the class didn’t come, but the lesson still have to carry on, therefore today we learnt how to apply architecture dance on our school STAIRCASE. We choreograph the steps together with Mr. King with the song named Classic, sang by MKTO. It was really embarrassing… because our steps looks really childish, simple and people like teachers and students can easily seen us dancing on the staircase… ><
Our Dance Video:
After the funny and hilarious staircase dance, Mr. King let us choose a new Stimuli Challenge and we will have to create a new dance from it with the four of us as group mate (Richard, Sato, Jarrod and me). Since we are the only group here today, Mr. King let us have the privilege to choose which topic we want, and we chose “Object Dance”. Then we quickly research on dance that use any objects to dance and get inspired, at the same time find the objects that we want.
From this lesson I learnt what it really means by architecture dance, was to fully utilize the whole architecture, or anything that is around us, then use our body to feel it and dance with it XD
Things to improve:
We can have more time to prepared the staircase dance, and next time maybe with the whole class in will be more hilarious and fun!
Week 5: Lesson 1 (16 Feb 2016)
Today whole class was here, so the other group will perform “man to the moon” which is from the Stimuli Challenge 1. I have to say that their dance may be funny, but I can see their interactions with each other and they liveliness in their dance. In my opinion, they did a great performance! After their performance, they received the Stimuli Challenge 2 from Mr. King and both of our group started to choose songs and choreograph for our steps. We run through lots and lots of songs, trying to find one we all agree with, and we discussed what object should we dance with.
Week 5: Lesson 2 (19 Feb 2016)
Today due to most of our class went to Fairview Got Talent competition, therefore Mr. King let us (Keith, Clanisse and me) rest for one day, so today no lesson is taking in place. We try to come up with something fun to not be bored, so we watch a video and I taught them some simple dance steps for Me Gusta Tu and Glass Bead.
Week 6: Lesson 1 (23 Feb 2016)
Today Mr. King taught us about break dance, it includes movements like handstand, front roll, back roll, baby freeze and more. After that Mr. King combine the stunts he taught with some dance steps to dance “Love myself –Hailee Steinfeld“, however not the whole class can do stunts, therefore when some of us doing stunts, some of us will dance as background~
We started off the dance with pointing our fingers to different direction as the music starts – ting ting ting! We first stand in a formation like a triangle shape, and then we exchange our position with others, then lastly we stand in two lines and moved our hands and legs together with the music. It is very fun today 🙂 I learnt one of the technique of baby freeze – lay down on floor, moves your body weight to your arms and waist, then slowly carry up your legs. It is hard to do a stunt, that’s why I still have to learnt and practice hard, for one day to breakthrough my limits and makes my way to new level of dance.
After the lesson, Mr. King gave us time to decide on our song and the objects, and in the end we chose “Come and get it – Selena Gomez” and sticks as our object to dance with. The reason why we chose this song is because we felt that this song has a good beat and rhythm, and we chose sticks were because that sticks were commonly used in dance. Plus I am more familiar to sticks than umbrella, if it is umbrella I think i will end up spoiling it… ==|||
Week 6: Lesson 2 (26 Feb 2016)
Today we did a fun activities – “Color Paper Dance!” At first Mr. King taught us different dance steps for each color paper, and we have to memorize it. Example: Blue – cross your legs over and open you arms (from left to right), Green – roll up your fist, at the same time point out your leg that is the same side as your fist that rolls up (Do left and right side both once).
Then when we all were taught 5 or 6 different dance steps for each color paper, we will take turn to go in front and choose the color of dance we want our classmates to dance. This activities is very fun as some of our classmates will temporarily forgot the steps or the one who choose the color paper will purposely confused those who were dancing. This activities taught me to be responsive and stay alert to the color of the paper, most importantly link connection from the color paper to movements. So when I look at the color, my body will automatically dance the steps.
After this extremely fun activities, we get our hands on choreographing dance steps for Stimuli Challenge 2. This time we managed to choreograph some steps out with the sticks, and we were never too shy to give ideas for dance steps. Today I learnt that sticks are not as easy as we thought it could be, because sticks are not like our hands or legs, it will be out of control if we do not control it properly. Example: we dance with sticks, then suddenly it fly away… ==|||
Week 7: Lesson 1 (1 March 2016)
Today Richard taught us a few dance steps that he thought of in home, and then we trying to give him more ideas on steps or create our own dance steps then try to modify it into our dance. Throughout the day, I can say that our group really cooperate, communicate well and contributed evenly, because each of us helps giving ideas on steps, so one does not have to put all the responsibility on his/her shoulder. After all, this is a group work, we go forward as a team and we work as a team, we are never alone! In the end of the day we complete the dance with each of the steps consists of everyone’s ideas and style. I am happy and truly glad about it 😀 However due to we still unfamiliar with the dance steps, we practice the steps again and again so we can memorized the steps.
Things that went well:
We exchange ideas with each others and we all exchange the role as leader and followers, we share the responsibilities among each of us. We successfully complete the dance steps in time 🙂
Things to improve:
Memorize the steps and be more synchronize with each other and the song.
Week 7: Lesson 2 (4 March 2016)
Today we continue practiced our dance and decides on our clothing for performance. We think that native clothing or India clothing will be good, because our song sounds like India song and our dance steps are like more towards native style. So we decide to wear costumes that looks traditional and native on the day we perform.
Week 8: Lesson 1 (8 March 2016)
Today is our performance day and in my opinion we did well, even though there are some careless mistakes like facial expression, steps and beats. We can improve more on our synchronization, and our facial expression try to be moody *no laughing…, lastly be more in beats and rhythm of the song. However I am satisfied with our dance as we are not that used to dance with sticks and the steps, so I think the problem is that we lack of time to practice, otherwise we will be over powered~ XD
Week 8 Lesson 2 (11 March 2016)
Jinen Dance 