Reflections on Preposition Dance
Last week I attended a movement workshop at the Arts Education Resource Fair. It was led by Stacey Blakeman from San Francisco Ballet. In addition to teaching us about Anne Green Gilbert’s Brain Dance we received a packet with several activities, one of which was Preposition Dance.
I’ve been playing with Preposition Dance the whole week. I tried it out on two 5th grade classes at Longfellow and one 4/5 class at Monroe. The students responded really well to it, they seemed to be really engaged! And we went through a ton of prepositions! They had such great ideas!:
“Put your face on your paper.”
“Do push ups over your paper”
“Ski with your paper.”
“Jump upon your paper.”
I think this activity is a keeper for me. I also love the fact that all it requires is a piece of paper and space! Oh, and a drum, if you have one. I used a maraca and gave students 8 counts to move (one of our performance pieces is counted in 8’s so it gave us some practice with the 8 count) but I think I’m going to invest in a hand drum soon - a creative dance teacher’s must have!
My next step is to experiment with both prepositions and adverbs. I think the format of this activity will easily lend itself to that: “move toward / away from / over / under your paper quickly / cautiously / boldly / energetically / dynamically / daintily / honestly / passionately / silently.” etc…
Thanks for introducing me to this activity Stacey!
It’s been so fun to facilitate and watch.
