DANCE PEDAGOGY AND PRAXIS: A PERSPECTIVE FROM THE CLASSROOM

रYAZ 2022-23 VOLUME 3 • ISSUE NO. 1 Back to Campus FEBRUARY 2022 CONTENTS CAN GANDHI SOLVE THE PROBLEM OF LANGUAGE FOR THE INDIAN SCHOOL? 1 DANCE PEDAGOGY AND PRAXIS: A PERSPECTIVE FROM THE CLASSROOM 4 मन के च और खयाल से . ... लखने व पढने क चगारी तक 8 Shashwat Shukla TEAM ADVISOR Padma Sarangapani EDITORS / REVIEWERS Anusha Ramnathan, Bindu Thirumalai, Gomathi Jatin, Meera Chandran, Ruchi Kumar & Shamin Padalkar. Shabari Varun Gupta VOICES FROM THE FIELD STUDENT REPRESENTATIVES Lokesh Rao Jadav, Riddhi Nikam & Vinay Lautre COVER PAGE IMAGES Vinay Lautre COVER PAGE, DESIGN, LAYOUT AND FORMATTING Ramesh Khade This issue can be accessed online at: https://bit.ly/CETE_Riyaz DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY (D&T) EDUCATION Teenu Choudhary 18 EXPERIENCES AT OVEE Rutuja Warthi and Alia Farooqui 21 SCIENCE AND RURAL COMMUNITY SCHOOLS Lokesh Rao Jadav 23 BEARER OF THE LOADED PROMISE 25 TISS-E-DASTAAN 31 COVID- 19: DOCTORAL STUDENT EXPERIENCES AND RECOMMENDATIONS 32 Bansi Smruti Shovna Ekta Singla and Emaya Kannamma Brought out by the Centre of Excellence in Teacher Education (formerly CEIAR) and School of Education, TISS, Mumbai. Disclaimer: The views expressed in the periodical are those of the authors and not necessarily those of CETE/SoE, TISS. © TISS, 2022 DANCE PEDAGOGY AND PRAXIS: A PERSPECTIVE FROM THE CLASSROOM SHABARI RAO [email protected] 4 Introduction: Contextualising my approach to dance education In India, the term 'professional dancer' is most often applied to someone who is a performer. This unidimensional way of understanding the dance profession has many implications on how dance is taught, and on the hierarchies created between the performing of dance and the teaching of dance. Teaching is seen as subsidiary to performance and consequently the primary aim of most teaching is to create performers. As a dance educator who rejects this narrow idea of what it means to engage with dance, I have sought spaces in which to teach dance (and teach through dance), where the focus is not on producing or training professional dancers, but allowing opportunities for a creative and expressive engagement with the body. This approach to dance education is not very common in India: indeed dance education as a field is itself largely underdeveloped. This means there does not exist a body of knowledge systematically developed over time that can serve as a resource to practitioners in the field. It is up to individual dance educators to develop and articulate their work by critically evaluating their practice in the context of international dance education research and theory, in an effort to build a body of knowledge that is robust and yet context specific. In the following essay I will use one example of my teaching practice along with relevant theoretical frameworks to critically evaluate the notion of creativity within my work as a dance educator. Understanding the term creativity As a dance educator I have often invoked the concept of creativity for advocacy and legitimacy within the schooling system, without being able to clearly articulate what it is and how my teaching actually promotes it. Most people consider it something of a mystery or enigma and are willing to let the term slip by unquestioned. Margaret Boden in her chapter entitled “What is Creativity” comments: “It is hardly surprising, then, that 5 some people have "explained" it in terms of divine inspiration, and many others in terms of some romantic intuition, or insight” (75). Indeed Ronald A. Beghetto and Jonathan A. Plucker's research suggests that “problematic beliefs about creativity stem from a fundamental problem with how creativity is defined” (in Kaufman and Bear 321). This problem is especially significant for teachers of dance and other creative arts. Clarity on what is meant by creativity, and how it can be best supported, is essential. Margaret Boden starts her discussion by setting out two kinds of creativity. She terms the first psychological (P-creative) and the second historic (H-creative), and explains the terms thus: A valuable idea is P-creative if the person in whose mind it arises could not have had it before; it does not matter how many times other people have already had the same idea. By contrast, a valuable idea is H-creative if it is P-creative and no one else, in all human history, has ever had it before. (76) This idea is taken up in Eleanor Duckworth's essay “The Having of Wonderful Ideas”. Duckworth discusses the relevance of understanding these two types of creativity and the relationship between them in an pedagogical context (14). Her argument is that all learners have “wonderful ideas” when provided with the right environment in which to ask and answer questions (Duckworth 1). The purpose of education then, is to enable learners to have their wonderful ideas and as Duckworth puts it: The more we help children to have their wonderful ideas and to feel good about themselves for having them, the more likely it is that they will someday happen upon wonderful ideas that no one else has happened upon before. (14) Taking these notions on creativity forward, Anna Craft explores a creative pedagogy, providing a set of pointers that evidence creative learning in classrooms in the chapter “Learning and Creativity” (48, 58). She argues that these pointers provide “evidence of children's inter-mental generative connections with their own and others' ideas” (Craft 61). Craft links creative practice to value and originality, and suggests that creative pedagogy supports the efforts of learners to develop work that has value and is original (Craft 53). Examining creativity in practice For the purpose of this discussion I will critically evaluate one lesson plan that was part of a course that I taught to undergraduate art and design students in Bangalore, India. I will examine how creativity is addressed with reference to the five guidelines provided by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA in Craft 55). The focus of the class was to investigate how placement in space, or the use of space, has an impact on meaning making. Students began by manipulating the spatial relationships of small objects found around the class on a large sheet of paper – somewhat like a board game. Once they got a sense of how things change when placement changes, this was moved to a 3-D space and students placed their own bodies in the space to see how meaning emerges when spatial relationships change. Typically, Indian classical dance is very frontal in its presentation, as are several classroom settings. In this session I wanted to provide learners with ways of questioning and challenging their default ideas about the use of space. In the words of one learner “By just using one variable [placement] in every activity there were so many possibilities, interpretations” (written interview 12 Feb 2014). For this session I designed a series of tasks where the learners go from manipulating objects on a sheet of paper and assessing the impact of placement in that context, to placing moving bodies in the work space and examining the layered meanings that can be introduced into the movement sequence through the imaginative and creative use of placement. This provided them an opportunity to make connections and see relationships between placement and the 6 creation of meaning. A learner wrote: “After these two exercises my mind was more open to an abstract and 3D use of space” (written interview 12 Feb 2014). The first stage of the task, where learners manipulated external stationary objects gave them the chance to envisage what might be. One learner commented: “The sheet exercise gave us a bird's eye view of the stage and helped us think [of] and explore new ways to place objects” (written interview 12 Feb 2014). The learner went on to write: “It was interesting how it turned out each time because it was so different from the rest,” thus suggesting the possibility of exploring ideas and keeping options open. By finally asking learners to write down their responses to the session they were given the opportunity to reflect critically on ideas, actions and outcomes. One learner wrote “Generally we take placement for granted” (written interview 12 Feb 2014). Duckworth's notion of having wonderful ideas and Boden's concepts of P-creativity and Hcreativity give me a theoretical vocabulary through which I can discuss how my teaching provides learners with opportunities to be creative. Craft's discussion of creativity in terms of learner behaviour and learning processes further enables me to articulate well defined ways in which my teaching enables creativity. In Craft's words: facilitating the evolution, expression and application of children's own ideas forms the heart of 'creative learning', which, it is proposed engages children powerfully in knowledge production. (55) Conclusion My approach to dance education is perhaps closest to Stobart’s description of social constructivism, which “seeks to hold in balance learning as a cultural activity and as individual meaning-making” (151). This approach acknowledges the centrality of the relationship between the facilitator and the learner and foregrounds the context within which the learning takes place. Further, it views the learner as “generative” (Craft 55). By critically evaluating my practice with a focus on creative learning, I have been able to find theoretical underpinnings for my practice that resonate with my approach to dance education. However, the paradox that I am left with is that creativity defies definitions. This is a good thing, because it means that we remain creative in engaging with creativity! References Beghetto, Ronald A. Plucker, Jonathan A. “The Relationship Among Schooling, Learning, and Creativity” Creativity and Reason in Cognitive Development Ed. Kaufmann, James C. Bear, John. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2006). 316 – 332 Print. Boden, Margaret. “What is Creativity”. Dimensions of Creativity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press (1996). Print. Craft, Anna. Creativity in Schools Tensions and Dilemmas. Oxon: Routledge. (2005). Print. Duckworth, Elenore. The Having of Wonderful Ideas and Other Essays on Teaching and Learning. New York: Teachers College Press. (2006). Print. 7