Dance for the talented; differentiation exemplified

A classroom activity - creating/composing/performing

1. The whole group may be involved in creating and performing a dance based around David Bintley's 'Still Life' at the Penguin Café, for example. This work shows how a professional choreographer uses different stimuli (including music which mixes different styles and traditions, a book about endangered animals, particular designs on the album covers for the Penguin Café Orchestra and a film The Last Wave by Peter Weir) and utilises a variety of dance styles in response. The class might be set the task of exploring the movement phrases for one of the animals in this ballet. They could observe and adapt ideas used by Bintley. A more challenging performance task would ask students to reconstruct longer phrases using some of Bintley's exact movements and perform them accurately. They would have the professional dancer as a model of a successful outcome, and analysing the stylistic aspects will improve their performance skills. A more challenging choreographic task could involve creating phrases for an animal not chosen by Bintley. Here there would be no examples of movement to copy. The pupil would have to apply Bintley's principles instead.

   A development of this might involve examining other methods for creating animalistic movement rather than just looking at aspects of the movement and meaning. For example different methods, not just different styles, are used in: Christopher Bruce's Ghost Dances; Matthew Bourne's contemporary dance rendering of swans and Marius Petipa/Lev Ivanov's classical ballet swans in versions of Swan Lake; and traditional Bharata Natyam storytelling episodes may depict animals using hand gestures (hastas). Talented pupils could move away from sampling movement stereotypically linked to particular animals, for example, they could pay attention to the animal's qualities or its use of space in order to find alternative movement not typically associated with it or take less obvious aspects, for example, wrinkling of elephant skin instead of the obvious trunk. Encouraging a wide range of personal responses benefits all pupils. Pupils can be asked if they can work out what choreographic rules are being used in order to create their own ideas; in other words, not what is he doing and what does it mean but how and why has Bintley approached it in this manner? This is more challenging than simply experimenting with existing material from which to adapt ideas, not least because the pupil need not use any set movement taken from the video.

2. Pupils could research and find examples of choreographers talking about their working methods and experiment with these, for example, for his cygnets, Bourne describes making the arm and leg gestures separately and then splicing them together - chance is used as a strategy to create unusual patterns. This could provide other methods to explore and compare. Having clarified a style or working method, pupils can be asked to identify and explore its opposite. For example, The Petipa/Ivanov black swan (a character called Odette) uses held positions and emphasis to highlight them so pupils could focus on smooth and fluid movement that passes through positions instead. With problem solving approaches of the 'what-would-happen-if' variety it is important for room to be made for experiments which may fail - learning will happen as long as there is explicit discussion of the processes.
3. Pupils might be asked to identify a range of tiered tasks and give talented pupils more combinations to take into account. From a range of starting points, for example, a feather, a fur item, silk, heavy wool, wood, metal, sand, a concrete block, etc., explore the movement qualities inherent in the textures and fabrics. The more able (both in choreography and performance) can explore combining qualities within a single movement component (demonstrating a complex, shifting dynamic emphasis), while the less able will complete one quality before performing a different movement with another quality. Provide music that can be utilised in different ways by the group so that all are performing to the same piece, for example, it may simply be accompanying the mood or some pupils may be merely following the beat, others may be following the rhythm, the texture, or the overall shaping or phrasing.

4. A teacher might give additional responsibilities to the more able for:

   • Creating set phrases for the class to use
   • Taking charge of some sections of the dance or the class
   • Allowing them to teach/lead other pupils

   All pupils benefit from giving feedback to each other (peer mentoring) in the practice of observation and appreciation skills, but provide the more able with several aspects to notice, not just neatness of footwork for example but also noting clarity of floor pattern at the same time.

5. Narrowing down a task by excluding a key area can be as challenging as opening up the possibilities. For example, a sophisticated use of space has been identified as a talent indicator, but what happens if floor patterns/travelling (a key use of space) is specifically forbidden in the task for the talented? They would have to explore other spatial aspects more fully and this would extend their understanding of the concept. Change the features of the tasks set; try using improvisation, for example, drawing the name of a chosen animal in the space using the hand is a simple task made increasingly more challenging by changing levels, facing new directions, using different body parts, then letting different joints take over for each of the letters and then individual parts of letters. Finally the same joint should not be used twice. As each rule is added, the aim is to accumulate them into the movement response. Only talented pupils will be able to bring them all into play. Ask pupils to invent systems to record their choreography to improve analysis (there are of course actual notation systems in existence too). The least able can be encouraged to capture one or two significant elements such as floor patterns or draw main motifs, while others can analyse rhythmic and dynamic content and provide a sequence of counts.