8 Week CURRICULUM

For eight weeks, we will delve into the five fundamental components of dance: space, time, force, body, and form.

SPACE: Where does movement take place?

TIME: When does movement occur?

FORCE: How is movement executed?

BODY: What part of the body is used for movement?

FORM: How is dance structured?

We will also explore six qualities of dynamic movement:

SUSTAINED: Slow, smooth, and continuous movement.

SUSPENDED: A moment of stillness, the high point, or a balance.

PERCUSSIVE: Sharp, choppy, and jagged movement.

SWINGING: Swaying, to and fro, like a pendulum.

COLLAPSED: Falling, releasing, or relaxing.

VIBRATORY: Shaking, wiggling, or trembling.

Each week, we will introduce a progressive system and a new element to support dancers of all levels. We will build technique to enhance their skills from one week to the next.

Here’s a brief overview of the curriculum:

Week 1: Traveling - Teaching students how to move gracefully through space. Sustained, slow, smooth, and continuous movement will be introduced.

Week 2: Turns and Turning - Turning adds flair to any dance choreography. Balanced turns or spiral turning can be accomplished with the Dynamic quality of Suspending a moment of stillness, the high point, or a balance.

Week 3: Jumping and Leaping - Working fundamentals of how to take off for a jump and how to land a leap are essential for all dancers at all levels. Basic training in this area always needs polishing. High Percussive, sharp, choppy, and jagged jumps will be explored, followed by swinging and swaying into pendulum-leaps.

Week 4:

Balance is a skill dancers need to understand. It’s a dynamic process, not a static state, that involves constant adjustments and control. Stillness in dance isn’t just the absence of movement; it’s a deliberate and expressive pause that can create tension, focus, and a powerful visual impact.

We’ll explore collapsing and suspending as well.

Week 5:

Levels

Low Level: Movements like crawling, kneeling, or crouching.

Medium Level: Walking, stepping, or balancing.

High Level: Involving elevation or reaching high, such as leaping, jumping, or stretching into the air.

Working these levels into our combinations and discovering our own individual movements through technical prowess keeps us curious.

Week 6:

Gestures:

Small movements of the body, especially the hands and head, are used to express ideas, feelings, and intentions. We’ll incorporate these gestures into movement to enhance communication and understanding. Qualities like vibratory, shake, wiggle, tremble add emotional depth and uniqueness.

Week 7:

This is the week where our individual solos or precision of the group combination becomes defined. We’ll explore what emotions we’re giving to the movement. Emotions like love, laughter, sorrow, courage, anger, terror, disgust, and surprise—only a few—will be explored.

Week 8, our final week of training, will be dedicated to showcasing our combination. Over the past seven weeks, we’ve been diligently working on this, and we’ll highlight any individual solos that would like to perform at the group level. Each dancer will be able to invite 3 guests to share their dance with the community.

Ballet story from GESTURES during our last 8 week intensive:

“She was angry that the beauty of the dance wasn’t heard. ‘Kiss me and see if my idea is good. If not, I shall cry myself to sleep before the queen awakes.’”