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SESSIONS A Meeting of Minds: Adapting Laban’s Movement Themes to Dance Writing Projects by Candace Feck, USA Paper This paper will discuss the development, application and findings of a project scheduled for implementation in the Columbus, Ohio (USA) Public Schools during winter and spring, 2005. Using Preston-Dunlop’s articulation of Laban’s movement themes (Modern Educational Dance, rev ed. 1990) as a blueprint for designing pedagogical materials for writing about dance, the project seeks to marry exposure to dance with language arts requirements in the curricula of Ohio public schools, targeted toward students at various points along the educational spectrum. While dance is sometimes introduced to elementary and secondary students in Ohio as a subject in the Physical Education or the Arts curriculum, it remains one of several options to meet this requirement, and often gets marginalized by teachers who are not confident of their expertise in this area. In addition, the recent curricula of public schools from elementary through secondary levels reflect ongoing budget cuts, while school administrators face increasing pressures to meet standards for excellence in non-arts subjects. Moreover, few schools include adequate studio space for dance education as a physical practice. I contend that a missed opportunity to introduce dance through writing lies in the confluence of these developments. All Ohio students are required to meet stringent English language arts standards, including consistent work in the development of writing skills. Based on the fact that language arts educators hunger for new topics to inspire student writing experiences, this project has been designed to promote dance as a subject for such activities, thus meeting state-mandated Language Arts standards. Thus, the project aims to develop pedagogical materials that allow educators to introduce dance as a subject, while also supporting the acquisition of particular skill sets in writing. A guiding strategy of the project involves the adaptation of Laban’s movement themes, as articulated by Valerie Preston-Dunlop, into specific curricular units that deal with writing. In section four of "Theme One, Introduction to the Body," for example, attention to specific parts of the body is featured. Using a video of Mark Morris’ solo "Jealousy" (1985) as a point of departure, students are presented with writing assignments that focus on identifying the body parts most active in this short dance. A host of English language standards might be brought to bear in writing exercises based on this idea, including state benchmarks for the youngest students such as simple vocabulary acquisition and the composition of writings that convey a clear message and include well-chosen details; standards at the middle school level such as the use of narrative strategies to develop characters, plot and setting, maintaining a consistent point of view; and for those in the upper levels, the expectation to support judgments through references to the work, applying correct grammatical structures to effectively communicate their ideas about the work. Given inspiring visual examples and well-designed curricular support, the project hopes to support dance as a subject alongside other writing topics, meet state English-language standards, and inform students about a major art form that is largely absent from their current school studies. Candace Feck, PhD, is Assistant Professor in the Department of Dance at The Ohio State University, where she teaches courses in contemporary dance and theatre history, theory and criticism. She holds a B.A. in Cultural Anthropology from Webster College, an M.A. in Dance and a PhD in Art Education from The Ohio State University. Feck's dissertation, Understandings about Dance: An Analysis of Critical Writings with Pedagogical Implications (2002), reflects her ongoing concern with curricular issues in dance criticism. She received Teacher Certification in Labanotation in 1982 and has taught classes in Labanotation and in Motif writing. She received a National Dance Association award for her achievements in dance documentation in 2000.
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