It's starting...

So I tried out the workshop with Fiona’s dance students, including the post grad we’ll be working with at the secondary school. We started with some automatic writing to mentally limber up, and then watched the Liz Aggiss film. I forget how conservative most young people are and I’m now wondering whether it was a bit too weird for them! It did produce some astonishingly good writing though… They then paired up and read each other’s work and then interpreted it in movement before regrouping to discuss the process. These are some observations

1.Although many of them didn’t punctuate their writing at all, their dance was filled with phrasing which is the mark of a good dancer. Fiona says that they learn these ‘dynamics’ quite early on and would naturally punctuate any improvised dance. It occurred to me that your Year 9 dance students may understand how phrasing can add meaning, and it may be an opportunity for them to teach non-dancers in a ‘critical friend’ way.

2. If we don’t do the critical friend approach, it would take too long for Kate to work with each piece of work. I think a smaller group would work better than a whole class anyway.

3. The automatic writing that the dancers did yesterday was, on the whole, amazing. I do this at the beginning of all my lectures and business writing seminars and it’s always the same. People are astonished when they look at the page and see a part of themselves that they didn’t know existed! It seems a missed opportunity to not make more of this and I’d like to think of a way of capturing this.

(This is exciting...)

A conference, a conference...

With punctuation in crisis among school leavers, is it time to explore a more kinaesthetic approach to teaching grammar and punctuation in schools? Can dance interpret incorrect punctuation and show how a misplaced comma or an errant semi-colon can stop the flow of creative writing? And can dance illustrate how correct punctuation can improve the flow of a sentence, giving it back its natural rhythm and setting the writer free?

A post graduate dancer in residence at Priory School in Lewes, its Year 9 English and dance students and a professional writer and lecturer in Broadcast Media at the University of Brighton join forces to explore the rhythm of the sentence through movement to see how dance can improve creative writing.

Captured by a crew from the University’s Broadcast Media course, the resulting DVD and paper will be presented at conferences, with a special cut and manual available for teaching purposes.

The Write Rhythm

Take an idea, give it a few words to make it look good, spin it around until all the world is watching and then throw it out to see who catches it. That's how The Write Rhythm first took shape. A conversation over a coffee about the use of a semi colon, a scratch of the head while marking student essays and a ponder about the future of grammar. Would David Cameron do any more for the poor old comma than the Labour Party have done, squeezing thoughts into structures and out the other side to an A* and bypassing the use of punctuation? What language do these kids want to speak? If....(leap into void) they can rap like Chipmunk... (freefall), what would happen if the language that they do understand could teach them the basics? If Michael Jackson said more about the use of a colon than any teacher ever could, perhaps dance could teach kids the rhythm of language.

Fast forward... PG Cert special study...what could I research that would benefit my students, push debates on, get me a place on posh conferences and a career in academia? What would stop me scratching my head while marking? What could set my students free?  Is anyone else researching this?  Have I chanced upon a new hypothesis?