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SESSIONS Laban-Bartenieff Movement Analysis (LMA) as a Tool for Teaching Dance, Performance Skills, and Wellness to Adolescent Girls by Deborah Hull, USA Paper For the past seven years I have taught dance to girls ages 12-14 in the 7th and 8th grades at the Hamlin School, an independent school for girls in San Francisco, CA, in the United States. I incorporate LMA into all aspects of my work with my students, from dance classes and rehearsals, to my counseling work with students during our advisory sessions. In my presentation I would like to explore the following questions: - How does LMA serve my work as a teacher of adolescent girls in a highly academic independent school? - How does LMA help to strengthen my pedagogy and my students’ performance and life skills? - How does LMA inform and illuminate my interactions with students outside of the dance class and rehearsal settings? I presently teach three dance classes at Hamlin. The first introduces 7th grade students to dance via improvisation and consideration of the roles that African and European music and dance played in the development of religious expression and vernacular dance forms in the Americas during the colonial era. The second offers 7th and 8th grade students a daily movement and choreography laboratory through which they create an original movement piece that we present publicly at the end of the term. The third class is a course in musical theater production that I co-teach with my drama and music colleagues. In that class I direct a 20 member dance ensemble comprised of 7th and 8th grade girls, and with their help I choreograph the musical, the major middle school (grades 5-8) production that takes place every spring. The school has been in existence for 140 years, a long time by California standards. The culture of Hamlin models itself on that of the college preparatory schools of the American Northeast: historically it has valued cognitive function over bodily expression, and the current curriculum emphasizes cultivation of students’ analytical and discursive skills. My particular challenge has been to offer students the opportunity to enter into different modes of sensing, feeling, and communicating that provide contrast to and recuperation from the Effort constellations that dominate their days. For example, many of my students spend the majority of their days in Remote State ( ) and Mobile State ( ), states which are missing the active role of Weight ( ) and Weight Sensing ( ). Exploration of Weight ( ) and Weight Sensing ( ) thus becomes integral to our consideration of a range of subject matter, from dance to health and wellness. Over the past seven years I have developed curriculum around the movement aptitudes and deficits of the population I serve. In my presentation I would like to begin by taking participants through a kinesthetic experience of some of the elements of my curriculum. I would then like to provide LMA analysis of my work at Hamlin; video footage and a Power Point presentation will support my analysis as I seek to answer the questions posed above. Deborah Hull, MFA, CLMA, is a San Francisco-based performer, choreographer, and teacher. She teaches dance and chairs the performing arts department at the Hamlin School, an independent school for girls in kindergarten through eighth grade. Ms. Hull is also an independent choreographer and a member of Maxine Moerman Dance Theatre, a San Francisco based modern dance company. She holds a BA in French from Amherst College, an MFA in dance from Arizona State University, and certification in Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis from the Integrated Movement Studies Program (IMS).
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