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Dance – Dance with Jan

Date:

Today in dance we:
Began our session by looking at images of colourful butterflies and talking about their poetic names, such as Birdwing Butterfly, Evening Brown Butterfly, Wanderer Butterfly, Orange Lace Wing Butterfly, Moonlight Jewel Butterfly, and Cruiser (lots of movement material in those names). We talked about the life cycle from egg to caterpillar to cocoon to butterfly, and then explored each stage in movement. The children climbed inside white bags or wrapped themselves in coloured fabric to create the eggs, as in the opening sentence of Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar: 'In the light of the moon a little egg lay on a leaf'. Then we popped out of the eggs and emerged as tiny and very hungry caterpillars. Lots of 'ooching and mooching', extending and contracting, then back into the bags and for contained movements of spinning the cocoons. The emergence of the butterflies was dramatic and the butterfly dance to Bach’s Harmony of the Seasons was beautiful. The children's focus and concentration throughout this entire sequence was clearly evident and you could hear a pin drop! I was so proud of the children.

The next part of the class was committed to solos, trios, and group work. All children in the group are eager to share their dances with each other, and today we experienced some truly magical and creative individual dances. It is very exciting for me to find that some children are choreographing their dances at home and bringing their ideas to class. Also choreographic understanding is developing, with all children understanding the form of a clear beginning, middle, and end. I am also seeing movement sequences and the use of repetition with special motifs.