Output details
35 - Music, Drama, Dance and Performing Arts
Manchester Metropolitan University
Boy's Dance Lab - practice as research project.
Boy’s Dance Lab was a research project that responded to my observation of the limited dance opportunities for boys including:
• Competition driven break/street dance groups
• In education under the umbrella of sport
• Private dance school examination driven learning
Risner (2009) suggests that comparing dance and sport and using breakdance as a ‘way in’ perpetuates male gender stereotypes, narrowing the possibilities for boys to be anything other than ‘macho’. Underpinned by research from the field of dance, gender and masculinity and gender performativity theory , Boy’s Dance Lab attempted to intervene with the social construction of gender by presenting boys with a non-typical, alternative dance opportunity.
By foregrounding process over product, I developed a series of workshops that focussed on nurturing individual creativity and reflective thinking as fundamental skills in the learning and creation of dance; movement experiments and reflective exercises were core elements of these workshops. I facilitated creativity by delivering a variety of tasks to which the boys responded with their own ideas. These ideas were shaped into phrases that were assimilated into a piece of choreography performed by the boys. Creative tasks were followed by reflective exercises, which included discussions, writing or drawing.
Through workshop analysis, I developed a pedagogical model of physicality, creativity and reflection, which I applied to each task. I found that this combination was an effective strategy of engagement since each individual had strengths in different areas. Most participants enjoyed physical high-energy movement, where some group members excelled creatively, responding well to devising tasks. With encouragement, older members of the group became more willing to engage in reflective exercises, whereas the younger group members tended to struggle with this. Although these observations were unique to these individuals, my strategies enabled the boys to fully invest in the creative process, owning their movement in performance.
