Exploring My Inquiry: On Learning About Dance and Early Childhood

    These first few months of the new year at Middlesex University London Masters in Dance Pedagogy and Technique (MAPP) has been particularly challenging.  This because during this module I have begun to shape my research inquiry.  As I have begun to read, write and analyse the ethical implications of my future research, I have embarked upon a great learning journey.

     I am both a dance educator and an early childhood educator.  A few years ago, I was granted a scholarship to study as an undergraduate at the university and since dance as a mayor was not offered, I chose to study education hoping I would mature into a capable dance educator.  I studied hard for many years and graduated humbled by the great amount of knowledge I had been exposed to.  This last year I began my master’s in dance and as I started to read and learn about dance pedagogy, I felt a need to revisit my education studies through the lens of dance education.

     On framing learning, In A Handbook of Reflective and Experiential Learning: Theory and Practice Moon suggests that “reflective and experiential learning become more sophisticated processes variously following maturation, personal development and education.” (2004).  I always thought of these words in terms of my students, however in this instance the framing of learning has become more complex for me with experience and deeper learning.  The fascinating part has been that the new learning has occurred within the context of restudying and revisiting theory that I believed I already knew.  The knowing and learning has become more complex as I have re-studied and created greater connections between the different disciplines of practise and study.  Quoting Moon was again, perhaps I have improved my learning process, “Learning to learn can be characterised as the improving ability of the learner to manage the framing of her learning in order to fulfil more sophisticated purposes or to cope effectively with more complex material of learning.” (Moon, 2004).

     This analysis is about my learning.  It is about the evolution of my knowing about education and early childhood- it is about reading and re-learning theory and applying it to my current professional practise.  The integration of the knowledge of two disciplines, dance and education has required a complex analytical process that I did not anticipate.  It has been about understanding educational theory from the inquiry of dance.  It is the understanding of learning theory from a new perspective.  In this analysis new questions emerge; ethical considerations arise, and a brand-new reflection ensues.

   The original intention of my inquiry was to analyse dance teacher professionalisation in Costa Rica and to improve the delivery of national dance pedagogy with the aim of raising the training of dancers, starting with the earliest dance levels. 

   Upon researching and analysing literature it became apparent to me the extraordinary benefits that dance, and creative movement confers to students in early years of childhood.  An overwhelming number of authors concurred: notably among them Maria Montessori, Jean Piaget, Anne Green Gilbert, Anne O´Connor and Anna Daly write about the importance of movement and the impact on other areas of development of the child.  

     Dance benefits all domains of early childhood development: physical, cognitive, linguistic and psycho-social.  Anne O´Connor and Anna Daly advocate through their project Primed for Life, through which early years teachers are trained, “for a wider understanding of the body as a child´s first place of learning.”  (2018).  Through this research I have discovered an urgency of exposing the child to creative movement, a right of the child to discover the dancer within herself.  Movement in childhood development is not a ludic activity just to keep children entertained and tire them out.  All literature confirms that students learn through receiving information through their five senses.  Through locomotion the child breaks away from babyhood and becomes an explorer of the world.  The child´s central nervous system activates, and the dancing child becomes a stimulated, receptive child.  Neural plasticity at its peak in early childhood, a child is alive and ready to grow, mature, develop and learn.

    Dance education is central in early childhood, in optimising the child´s developmental potential.  The freedom of movement, to dance and discover is a child´s developmental right.  Dance for early years does not constitute just an isolated effort to increase the quality of a dance programme.  The outreach of dance and creative movement in the child goes beyond the dancing itself and into all areas of life and development.

     What does this mean in terms of my inquiry and dance in early childhood education in Costa Rica?  This is were my work is directing itself to.  Dance is not accessible to all Costa Ricans, the high cost of dance academies and the lack of government funded programmes make dance an activity of pursuit of the upper socio-economic classes.  Through further research I wish to analyse the potential of incorporating dance education in community centres and government-funded preschools.  This remains for further inquiry and an exciting possibility of application of dance research into the community.  Therefore, creating accessibility to the joy of dance to all children and to the great developmental benefits that dance, and creative movement can promote in early childhood.

Bibliography

Blom, L. and Chaplin, L (1942) The Intimate Act of Choreography. Pittsburgh, University Pittsburgh Press.

Gardner H. (1983) Frames of mind: the theory of multiple intelligences. New York: Basic Books.

Moon, J.A. (2004) A Handbook of Reflective and Experiential Learning: Theory and Practice. London: Routledge.

McFee, G. (1992) Understanding Dance.  London: Routledge

Suggested authors to read on Early Childhood Development and Movement/Dance: Maria Montessori, Jean Piaget, Anne Green Gilbert, Anne O´Connor and Anna Daly (multiple publications by each author)

Dancing with Children Embodied Parenting

I would like to share this lecture and open the discussion of dancing with children; embodied parenting.  As a mother I did feel the struggle of communication with my loved ones.  Words are not always the best form of communication, especially in families: children are developing vocabulary, structures and meanings.  Often times children do not know how to verbalise feelings and emotions that they barely understand.  The elderly in families are also vulnerable to exclusion as they loose verbal and auditive capabilities.  Couples sometimes struggle with verbal communication as well, and the wrong choice of words can cause unnecessary pain and heartbreak.

Body language is more natural and less complex than the cognitive process required for verbal language.  Babies, the elderly, and family members are fluent in non-verbal, emotional communication.  We need to be silent, to observe and dance with each other in a true effort of natural communication.  The notion that we stop and dance with our children is a gift of love, compassion and understanding, and an extraordinary activity for their healthy child development.

When working with children in their early years, they seem all to be natural dancers.  As a dance educator I had the unique experience early on in my practice working in the preschool classroom, dance improvisation and music improvisation was an extraordinary activity with which to begin class.  In a safe environment when feeling encouraged, the moment the children heard the music play they would burst in spontaneous and personal dance.  Through this rich and embodied dance experience, the children communicated acutely in nonverbal language about themselves, about their fantasies and about their immediate life stories.  It only seems perfect that intimate moments such as these be shared with their parents and caregivers.

On Ethics and the Impact We Make

Ballerina: Valeria Perez Photography: Eduarte #EduArte @eduartemedia 

Valeria is my dance student and is also a Psychology student, now researching about dance and Cognitive Development in children.

As professionals we face ethical dilemmas in our professional practice, often without our noticing.  As I step into the professional discussion of ethics cases that come to mind as of recent years that I wish to reflect upon.

Of Mocking Professors

A few years ago I witnessed two professors laughing and making fun of some students they had trained.  Witnessing such abnormal, unethical behaviour changed my life as a dance teacher.  Dance is hard.  Their criticism was actually accurate.  Their mockery and cruelness, unnecessary.  Their comments delivered in such a way were very damaging to the students,  They were onstage in costume and the laughter broke their adolescent self-esteem, even as adults they would struggle with this experience.  Rebuilding a broken dancer is always delicate and daunting.

Their is an ethical theme of undeniable responsibility regarding our students´shortcomings.  A dance teacher must not only claim the shooting stars as her own.  The flaws and imperfections, are ours as well.

That day my change was profound.  I decided that my students are not blind and deaf.  They may very well be more intelligent and have greater potential than myself.  My students need to hear the truth, no matter how hard the truth can be.  Should they have the opportunity to overcome present physical, emotional and psychological limitations, the student dancer must understand what these are and how they could focus their work and energy.  If there are things that can be overcome, the obligatory analysis follows: how can I dance despite of them.

The importance of speaking to and with the student is crucial.  As an experienced adult one must connect with the student and explain what one observed and analysed.  Yet, what the student thinks, feels and has analysed as well is even more important.  Such open conversation might correct and redirect the class effort from both teacher and student.  There are gaps in students´ understanding of dance and support needed as they grow up and mature that without free and open conversation, the teacher and the student would be unable to detect.  A teacher must always find time to speak with her student dancers, always.

On Ethics and Impact

There is that one extraordinary moment when an adult student dancer of mine decides to change her her thesis and direct it down the path of dance inquiry and early childhood development as impacted by dance classes.  Her approach is through the school of psychology, and I am fascinated by the idea of reading her work and learning from her contributions and ideas.

I am humbled and fascinated too that my student has been influenced by my work, as her dance classroom work and exploration has influenced mine.  Furthermore, now our academic writing can also be enriched by discussion and sharing of thoughts, ideas, readings and writings.  I am excited and surprised even, dreaming of the community we are building.  

The ethics of impact is overwhelming, everything we say and do in the classroom has an influence on our student dancers beyond our understanding.  We are agents of change and with our work bear deep ethical weight as we are faced with the power of transforming the dance world that surrounds us with our voice.

I feel happiness and my heart is swelling.  I feel proud of my student and motivated.  As a teacher one at times wonders of one´s own impact beyond demi-plies and work that vanishes as the dance ends.  This is a rare moment of clear pride and fulfilment as a dance teacher.

Shattering of Dance Theories and Frameworks

My beautiful and brilliant dancer Mariana Solano, 

an unlikely ballerina dancing Dying Swan

I was formed in a strict ballet tradition of classical dance.  The first years of my dance formation were a rigid education in which my mind formed inflexible frameworks of how a dancer must look, measure, weigh. etc.  I learnt dance theory of Cechetti, Vaganova, Cuban Ballet School, Royal Academy of Dance and other great classical ballet schools, dance theory and  classical traditions.  I was taught correct forms and shapes of dance passed on to me as technique and theory.

As a ballerina with Latin American heritage I constantly received the message that I would most certainly be received in the professional dance world, I would be welcome if I did not develop into a woman looking like a Latina.  If I were to look European with long legs and thin hips, I would have the possibility of becoming a dancer.  The specifics did not stop there, I would have to have certain physical conditions that would be the framework of my dancing technique.  I would have to have extraordinary rotation from my hips.  I needed flexible and supple feet to fill pointe shoes one day.  I had to be flexible and strong...I had to look like a ballerina even before the beginning of my serious ballet education.

I was always hanging by a thread.  My body was very responsive to training, I worked the hardest, harder than most dance students.  I felt that at any point when dancers would be cut, I would be too for what the dance world deemed "lack of conditions".  The concept of "weeding out" ballerinas during the education process was very common as I was growing up.  The idea was that as students were developing incorrectly they were removed from the dance school, like bad weeds growing up in a beautiful garden filled of otherwise beautiful flowers.  The less typical dancers with divergent body types and bodies with less favourable conditions were ruining the dance landscape and were waiting to eventually get cut.  

And yet we danced...and somehow we learnt to develop our bodies despite the conditions we lacked.  Perhaps our physical beauty was different from the standard European ideal, and yet we were beautiful in our exotic forms and colours.

At thirteen I remember sitting on the floor at a dance audition at a very prestigious dance school, and while I was being checked for my body conditions, I was told that my feet were not good enough.  I agreed and embarked on a lifelong battle to develop the best ballerina feet my body would permit.  I improved more than my imagination had conceived.  

I remember a year later speaking with a dance teacher of mine who really disliked me as a dancer, she believed I did not have a future as a ballerina and did not want me in the dance school.  I was only fourteen, a vulnerable age -but dancers are strong.  I remember during my yearly evaluation she asked me why I trained so much.  I did not know what to say, because I loved dancing...because I loved taking adult classes with Eric Hampton.  He was an extraordinary choreographer who thought I was a beautiful dancer despite my "imperfections" and unique look.  I trained a lot because I wanted to become a dancer, the answer seemed obvious to me!  I remained quiet.  My dance teacher told me, "I just wanted to make sure why you trained so much, because if it is to become a dancer, that will never happen.  Your feet will not improve more, they just will not.  You are older too, you will turn fifteen this year."

My frameworks shattered.  Although I was young and impressionable and I believed everything my teachers said because I was a disciplined ballerina who followed authority and did as I was told.  Yet, not this time, and I knew she was wrong.  She had no scientific basis to determine if my feet could develop more or not.  None.  My frameworks shattered, the people I was entrusting with my dance education were basing their conclusions on myth and tradition.  There was no Dance Science Education behind this, but ignorance and discrimination.  A dance teacher playing God and claiming she could see the future.

Six months later I would be dancing in a new dance school, a bigger and more famous school: The Washington School of Ballet.  During my audition a famous ballerina was teaching: Lupe Serrano.  She was Latin, short, with tiny stiff feet, she was like me.  She was a retired, beautiful dancer who had danced on the best world stages and had been partnered by Rudolph Nureyev.  

At fifteen, when I had been told previously that I would be too old to develop into a ballerina, I was dancing with the Washington Ballet for the first time.  I danced in the Corps de Ballet of the Waltz of Flowers Opening Night at Warner Theatre in Washington DC.  I wore a pink romantic tutu and flowers in my hair.  I still remember the feeling of awe and gratitude as the curtain opened for the first time and my heart being full of happiness.

I wish I could say that my dance teacher was completely wrong, she was not.  Her idea of the European-looking ballerina with ideal physical conditions is still the norm in dance today.  Dance technique is developed for this idealised dance form.  Students around the world are still being turned away from dance schools and rejected from auditions.   Where my understanding has changed is in the development of dance students and the role of the teacher.  The development of dance educational theory based on the potential of the dance student and not on their limitations.

Although I do evaluate my students with the same severity with which they evaluated me as a young dancer, I do  so not to define why my student would fail in her quest for dance technique proficiency, but rather to develop a personalised approach to dance education seeking to strengthen areas of deficiency and weakness, and exploit student´s natural talent, uniqueness and strength.

Within my frameworks of understanding the dance body as an idealised embodiment of the Classical Technique standard, is the duality of dance education and training theory that through systematic observation one can discover that the human body is highly adaptable.  Through rigorous training improved rotation, supple feet and conformation to dance lines and technique become possible even for those dancers with high limitations when their dance education began.

The strength of character, the undying discipline and a dancer´s aesthetic intuition may in the long term be greater indicators of a ballerina´s success than her predetermined bodily characteristics.  I theorise that the dance student can face physical challenges if willing to put in the extra training hours and face the challenges with courage and intelligence.

As we face new educational theory in the classroom, in the ballet classroom we must also walk away from the educational methodologies that treat dancers as products in the assembly line.  Ballerinas need to learn to think on their own.  They need to be problem solvers and learn to dance beyond the limitations of dance educators around them.  We need to form dancers that are their own teachers, critical thinkers that can pave the way of their own careers and training methodologies according to their needs and artistic vision.  After all, dance teachers train with yesterday´s knowledge and we are ignorant of the evolution of the new dance world that our students will face in the future.  

If our students face a dance world that is not welcoming them as artists, then it is their mission to transform the dance world into the inclusive and diverse world stage they wish to dance upon.  

Education is not the learning of facts,

but the training of the mind to think. 

-Albert Einstein

1879-1955