About (2011)

Next Steps

FOR YEARS 5/6

Expand on known ideas to create new and imaginative combinations through improvising, exploring and experimenting with movement. Use these processes to make a dance sequence.

  • Compare yourself to the four winds and make connections between the characteristics of each wind and your own personality. Associate yourself with one of the winds, as the people of the Torres Strait Islands are known to do.
  • Explore different movements using your wind as a stumlus (e.g. the way the wind makes them feel, how they watch the wind, the shapes and movements of the clouds, the ripples of the wind on the water) in a similar way Kris asked her collaborating performers to do.
  • Abstract these movements by altering space (e.g. size, direction, level), varying time (e.g. stillness, tempo, duration) and contrasting dynamics (e.g. sustained versus collapsing, percussive versus swinging).
  • Select your favourite movements maintaining the original order. Repeat these phrases so that you are able to perform them in the same way each time. Encourage students to talk to their wind with their movements and imagine the impact of the wind through their various dance dynamics.

Explore situations using creative thinking strategies to propose a range of alternatives. Reflect on, explain and check the processes used to come to conclusions, explaining ways students can check their thinking and deal with setbacks.explaining ways they check their thinking and deal with setbacks

  • Try performing your dance sequence at the same time as several other people. Watch another group do this with their sequences. Can you watch all of them at once or do you focus on one then another?
  • Develop a duo. Allow yourselves to cross or interrupt each other’s sequences.
  • Perform your dance in front of your peers. Ask them what they saw and felt when they watched your dance. Did they see a story, series of events or an idea?

Explain and justify ideas and outcomes.

  • How would you describe your dance? Write a short statement of intent?
  • How is the movement of the body used to represent your intention?
  • How did you use space and dynamics to create the ideas/feelings in this dance?
  • What kind of costume could you make or choose to enhance your dance?  Why have you made this choice?

Based on Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) Level 4 statements from the Critical and Creative Thinking Learning Continuum: Inquiring – identifying, exploring and organising information and ideas; Generating ideas, possibilities and actions; Reflecting on thinking and processes; and Analysing, synthesising and evaluating reasoning and procedures areas. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Australia (CC BY NC SA) licence. Accessed April 2015.