Whole Person Engagement

Art teachers know how crucial it sometimes can be to engage pupils in artistic practice. When our physical, mental and emotional selves are all busy in a creative flow of alertness and involvement, we are able to go beyond our usual range of expression, bypass inhibitions and invite shifts to occur. Throughout the workshop we brought improvisation tasks to explore modes of engagement and to observe how the presence of a person can vary.

One of the activities in the workshop is called ‚flocking’. The group moves as a flock, first walking around the room, then gradually involving more complex movements as they arise. The challenge is to maintain the movement as unison without pre-set materials. As the activity continues, the group arrives in a state that one is increasingly aware of the own body as well as to the other movers around. Once one overcomes the concern of what is right or wrong, one readily rides the flow of movement of the group, while the sense of individuality becomes even stronger. The resulting dance is visually speaking and dynamically surprising.

Contemporary dance, in its effort to diminish the invisible wall between audience and stage, between real life and theater, often presents dancers as persons, bringing forth their individuality. Contemporary dance training, therefore, employs methods and strategies to explore stage presence of performers and foster performers’ both physical readiness and perceptual openness. These methods, in which one’s movement ability is less important than one’s awareness and readiness for action, can support pupils in music lesson to perceive the presence of their bodies, understand the performative reality in music, as well as to grow their confidence in making individual choices.