Learning to Move with Abandon

For 8-, 9- and 10-year-olds who are new to movement, a creative dance class can be an intimidating and scary place. Because of this, I have seen many students cling to "dance moves" they already know, because they're more comfortable, or because they might deflect pressure by making others laugh. This can be a challenge when trying to establish an open, risk-taking creative community.

One of the strategies I've learned is to help these students get out of their heads and into their bodies as quickly as possible. I have not seen a faster way to do this than with the "Scarf Puppet" dance. One partner manipulates a scarf in different ways, and the other partner embodies the movements of the scarf, as if their partner is controlling them. This activity is widely used in the creative dance community, and the combination of copying an object and working with a partner to do so is usually very grounding for older beginners and alleviates fear within minutes.

I tried this work most recently with one of our fourth grade classes. At first, some students were still trying to use familiar dance moves (the Dab makes an appearance, then is modified), but they quickly found that there were many interesting new ways to make partners move, using the natural movements of a scarf in space. You can enjoy watching this evolution in the video below.