There have been a lot of great comments about how to get people into dance over on Pas de Trois at Dancing3.com. I’ll agree that one of the challenges of getting new people into appreciating dance, is to try and expose them to what they might be interested in.
I believe that it helps to inform people, even just a little bit, so that they are more likely to enjoy what they see. If you know about dance, you know what to appreciate. If you are new, you may not even have one idea of what to look for.
For a project in my teaching program, I had 5 students who did not have much experience with ballet. I showed them a video of a ballet performance. After that, I spent about 5 minutes going over the 5 basic ballet positions of the feet. I let them try them out, and we reviewed them just a tiny bit. I explained that these are like “rules” of ballet, and that most movements come from one of these positions.
I showed a video of a ballet performance to the group again, but told them to watch for the ballet positions. We had a discussion after the video, and I was amazed to see how much they had to say about the performance. They could discuss details of the performance, and recognized where a position wasn’t hit to perfection. Where just a few minutes before, this group didn’t know anything about viewing a ballet, with a few minutes more of information, they were able to discuss and critique a ballet.
This week I had a similar experience in the dance class I am teaching at a public performing arts middle school. I had students write what they knew about dance, and what they wanted to know, to gauge their prior knowledge. We then spent 4 days learning a few simple elements of dance. We spent one day each exploring Levels, (high, medium, low), Speed (fast, medium, slow), Body Shapes (straight, curved, angular, twisted), and Force (strong and light). After moving through all of these elements, we viewed videos of two different dances. They were instructed to pay attention to and take notes about the different elements that we worked with. After watching them, we discussed the dances.
Again, I was impressed with the level of discussion that went on. Judging by the discussion and the notes the students took, I don’t think anyone was bored to watch the dances, even though we watched them over and over. I believe that understanding what contributes to a dance, helped them to appreciate what they were seeing.
A small amount of education will help people engage with the art. Educating people isn’t the hard part. The hardest part may be getting people into a situation of wanting to know. But if you pay attention, I think you will find people who are interested to learn. If you decide to take someone to a ballet, or expose them to dance, try providing them with a little bit of information that they can hang on to and engage with.
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This is right on, teaching people even a bit of dance can give them a deeper appreciation for how it is done. I used to fall asleep during ballet performances or just get bored with them but once i started taking ballet classes and i went to a performance, i realized how beautiful it was that people could move the way they do in dance.