DANCE DIVERSITY & CHANGE – KEYNOTE INTRODUCTION

Dr Linda Ashley 19/7/13

Today I’m looking at fusion dance and asking:

·  Whether or how to fuse dances from different cultures

·  Whether and how we can teach dance contextually when making fusion dance.

The latter links the UC and DI strands of our national curriculum in dance, a connection less often made in teaching or thinking about the expectations of the curriculum.

What benefits and challenges might there be of fusing dances with teaching about them contextually (UC strand)?

My research showed that some teachers were not teaching about dance contextually because they saw it as:

·  Taking too much time to prepare for and to teach

·  Not practical enough

·  Too theoretical

·  Needed dance skills and knowledge that they did not have

·  Needing money to pay guest specialists that they did not have

·  Creating difficult pedagogical issues when some guests taught in ways that were not inclusive of the learners’ various needs.

These responses are understandable in that our curriculum expects a great deal of teachers.

However, every teacher in my study included a creative dance learning experience when they taught dance contextually. Was this necessary? Did it add anything to learning about dance contextually? It would certainly add to the time needed that seemed to be about teaching dance contextually. So an illusion of teaching dance in the UC strand as taking too much time could arise. Their responses also present a theory / practice split in the pedagogy.

One way in which this split manifests itself is when, in a creative learning experience, that particular process is not contextualised, creating the impression that it is separate from ‘cultural’ dance. It is not, it is cultural.

The history of intercultural borrowing is long and complex, particularly here in the Pacific. Creative dance has a long and complex history in which the origins of borrowing from other cultures is embodied. Before early 20thC modern dance, European ballet borrowed from other ‘exotic’ cultures. Nowadays, we are possibly more ethically sensitive to respecting the heritages and people whose dances we borrow and study. Dances on which our curriculum depends for its post modern, culturally pluralist pedagogy. Moreover, if we do not respect these cultural heritages and acknowledge them when we fuse them, the people who rely on them for a living and therefore eventually the dances themselves may disappear. Dance, as an art form, is particularly vulnerable to disappearing.

I’m not suggesting that fusion dance should not happen. Nor am I saying that what I’m suggesting today and doing in the workshop should have any hierarchical status over current practices. I am, however, suggesting that it is time we looked into finding different ways of making and teaching about fusion dance. Particularly, by including the context of creative and/or dance education.

Today’s workshop is based in a culturally responsive pedagogy, as underpinning our ANZC. Liz Melchior and Polly Thin-Rabb have both written about this and their work would be worth following-up on. Culturally responsive pedagogy expects teachers to:

·  Teach about a culturally diverse range of dances

·  Include and respect the cultures of the individual learners

·  Treat all dance as cultural

I am interested, and this is risk taking in terms of forging innovative ways of thinking, being and doing, in putting into practice ideas that have emerged from my research. My research itself has emerged from nearly 40 years of practice in dance and dance education. So today I am working with:

  1. Fusion dance as utilising a compositional device of juxtaposition, in which two dances are not merged but placed next to each other in space and time, so that we may compare and contrast them- seeing them for what they are.
  2. Integrating teaching about the context of creative dance whilst teaching about ways of making fusion dance.

Juxtaposition was the way that I collaborated with choreographers from 7 different cultures in making Dancing with Difference (2009), the dance that you see on the cover of my book Dancing with Difference: Culturally diverse dances in education (Sense Publishers). This dance won first prize in the Viva Eclectika Intercultural Music and Dance Festival, and combined contemporary, contact improvisation, hip hop, jazz dance, Samoan sasa, Kapa haka, Korean Drum dance and classical ballet.

Can we develop contextual understanding alongside dancing? I think we can and should try to do this more rather than thinking of the UC strand as a theoretical activity. I’m not suggesting that teachers should do this all the time, but can do this quickly and easily whilst teaching dancing or making dance.

How do different dances make us feel about self, others and the world around us when we dance them? How do different dances make us feel about self, others and the world around us when we watch them? Can we learn about similarities and differences between the dances and ourselves and others? If so how? These and other questions are what we can think about in the workshop- so let’s dance.

Make dance not war!