Cultural Dance
Workshops and Units
Introduce your students to the African dance perspectives, which are inclusive of rhythm, joy and play. Ranging from traditional rhythms to contemporary genres, our workshops can be tailored to suit your needs.
Heather Grant is (pending) completion of a Graduate Diploma in Teaching and Learning - Primary, an has over 10 years of practice in a multitude of dance genres and creative processes.
Schools that have commissioned AFRA Dance include:
Hutt City Dance Company (May 2017) (Yr 10-13)
Newtown School: Artsplash (June 2017) (Yr 4-6)
Kapiti College: Dance Course Week (Nov 2017) (Yr 9-10)
Schools where Heather has integrated dance into her classroom practice:
Te Kura o Waipahihi - Karori West Normal School: 'Leaves' (Yr 1)
Te Kura o Kiriwhitana - Clifton Terrace Model School: 'Weaving Our Worlds' 5 Week Dance Unit (Yr 5-7)
Our programme can be tailored to meet the Achievement Objectives of the New Zealand Curriculum (Ministry of Education, 2007):
Social Sciences
Workshops and units can be tailored to exploring the social sciences through dance. In particular, the following conceptual strands and their component Achievement Standards:
Identity, Culture, and Organisation
CL1. Understand how the cultures of people in New Zealand are expressed in their daily lives; Understand that belonging to groups is important for people; Understand that people have different roles and responsibilities as part of their participation in groups.
CL2. Understand how cultural practices reflect and express people's customs, traditions, and values; Understand how people make significant contributions to New Zealand's society; Understand that people have social, cultural, and economic roles, rights and responsibilities.
CL3. Understand how cultural practices vary but reflect similar purposes.; CL4. Understand how formal and informal groups make decisions that impact on communities; Understand how people participate individually and collectively in response to community challenges.
Place and Environment
CL1. Understand how places in New Zealand are significant for individuals and groups.
CL2. Understand how places influence people and people influence places.
CL3. Understand how the movement of people affects cultural diversity and interaction in New Zealand.
Continuity and Change
CL1. Understand how the past is important to people.
CL3. Understand how people remember and record the past in different ways.
CL4. Understand how people pass on and sustain culture and heritage for different reasons and that this has consequences for people.
The Economic World
CL4. Understand how exploration and innovation create opportunities and challenges for people, places, and environments; Understand how producers and consumers exercise their rights and meet their responsibilities.
The Arts - Dance
Workshops can be tailored to meet Curriculum Levels 1-4 within the four strands of the Dance Discipline:
Understanding Dance in Context
CL1. Demonstrate an awareness of dance in their lives and in their communities.
CL2. Identify and describe dance in their lives and in their communities.
CL3. Explore and describe dances from a variety of cultures.
CL4. Explore and describe how dance is used for different purposes in a variety of cultures and contexts.
Developing Practical Knowledge
CL1. Explore movement with a developing awareness of the dance elements of body, space, time, energy, and relationships.
CL2. Explore and identify, through movement, the dance elements.
CL3. Use the dance elements to develop and share their personal movement vocabulary.
CL4. Apply the dance elements to extend personal movement skills and vocabularies and to explore the vocabularies of others.
Developing Ideas
CL1. Improvise and explore movement ideas in response to a variety of stimuli.
CL2. Use the elements of dance in purposeful ways to respond to a variety of stimuli.
CL3. Selct and combine dance elements in response to a variety of stimuli.
Cl4. Combine and contrast the dance elements to express images, ideas, and feelings in dance, using a variety of choreographic processes.
Communicating and Interpreting
CL1. Share dance movement through informal presentation and share their thoughts and feelings in response to their own and others dances.
CL2. Share dance movement through informal presentation and identify the use of the elements of dance.
CL3. Prepare and share dance movement individually and in pairs or groups; Use the elements of dance to describe dance movements and respond to dances from a variety of cultures.
CL4. Prepare and present dance, with an awareness of the performance context; Describe and record how the purpose of selected dances is expressed through the movement.
Languages
Workshops can be tailored to integrate languages from the Latin American region (Spanish, Portuguese) with selected cultural dance phenomena (Salsa, Bachata, Merengue, Reggaeton, Afro-Cuban Rumba, Merengue, Cumbia Colombiana, Afro-brazilian Samba and Capoeira).
Science
The importance of Te Tāiao (the natural environment) within Te Ao Māori is paramount and integral to many aspects of Māori identity forged through creation narratives, whakataukī (proverbs), Atua (Spiritual/Environment Ancestors), whakapapa (lineage), and pre-colonial haka (whakaahua) (Pōtiki-Bryant, L., 2014, March–July; Royal, T. A. C., 2014, March). Provide opportunities for your Māori and other indigenous students to connect with Science in ways that are more reflective of their way of understanding and communicating knowledge about the Environment, for example, through karakia (intention, prayer), waiata (song) noho-puku (meditation), hau (breath/breathing), and kanikani/whakaahua (dance).
AFRA dance develops dance experiences that weave in Māori and West African cosmologies, breath and spirit with science - particularly the Living World.
Image Credit: Lynn Noanoa, Hutt City Dance Centre, Lower Hutt. Permission was granted by the students and their parents.