Chart activities

Exploring environments

Chart starter

Special places

1. Ask students to point out and discuss the environmental features shown on the chart.
2. Ask students to tell stories about their local environment, and discuss which stories could be danced and how. [A useful video/book resource for this exercise, which is produced by the Ministry of Education, is Dancing the Long White Cloud – Volcanoes Unit. Published by Learning Media (2002).]
3. Explore students' relationships with special places. For example, make a dance about going to the beach.

Dancing spaces
Dance can be performed anywhere. Discuss the following questions with students:

• Where in our school environment could we make a dance?
• How does the space we dance in influence the kind of movements we could do?

Try dancing in a chosen space to test the theories discussed.
Suggested dance element focus: relationships and space.

Environment moves

1. Students choose three of the environments shown in the chart.
2. Explore how people might move in these environments.
3. Join these movements together to make a dance sequence.

Suggested dance element focus: energy and relationship.

Birds, animals and sea creatures

Nature dance
Explore the shapes and movements of the sea, sea creatures, birds, and animals shown on the chart.

1. Imagine and explore how they might move, both on the spot (non-locomotor movement) and around the space (locomotor movement).
2. Use these ideas to make a dance either individually or with a partner.

Sea shell dance

1. Look at the shapes of shells, and then make a body shape and a movement that the shapes inspire.
2. Use the shapes of lines on the shells as pathways to dance along.
3. Combine a shape, a movement and a pathway into a short sequence.
4. Teach a partner and make a dance together.

Celebrations, festivals and parades

Dance for special events

1. Discuss what festival or parade might be happening on the chart.
2. Talk about how, when, where and why dance is used in special events.

School celebration

1. Imagine your school has a special event coming up. As a class, ask students to create the purpose for a celebration, and decide what will happen and why.
2. In groups, students create dance processions that could be performed through the school grounds/buildings to celebrate the event. Use unison locomotive movements. If and where appropriate, incorporate props. For example:
   • ribbons,
   • hoops,
   • pompoms,
   • streamers.

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Pathways

1. Find some pathways indicated on the chart. For example:
   • plane's flight path,
   • footpath up the hill,
   • spirals.
2. Try making these pathways in the air with upper body parts.
3. Explore ways to create these pathways on the floor by using a variety of locomotive movements.
4. Join some air and floor pathway movements together to make a dance.

People movement

Body shapes

1. Choose a small section of the chart.
2. Recreate any body shapes you see.
3. Create a dance using these still shapes as a start and finish point.

Relationships
Focus on the elements of dance by using particular images in the chart. For example, find figures who are:

• dancing in unison,
• mirroring,
• using asymmetry,
• shadowing.

Push play

1. Looking at the people on the chart, discuss how they might move if we 'pushed a play button'.
2. Explore both the individual and partner movements shown.
3. Working individually, students choose three people movements from the chart, replicate them, and then join them together to create their own movement dance.

Skeleton dance

1. Discuss the functions of the skeleton.
2. Explore movements that focus on isolated body parts.
3. Create a skeleton dance around these ideas.

Technology

Robot dance

1. Working individually, students make moves like a robot.
2. Students join with others to make a robot dance.

Dance element focus: energy

Breaking down technology

1. Discuss all the examples of technology shown on the chart.
2. Make a dance about technology breaking down.