9 Dance Contemporary Workshop Incursion

The unit of work for Elective Dance in Term 2 is ‘From Stimulus to Dance’. This is a compositional based unit where students will engage in problem-solving tasks and manipulate the elements of dance as they explore, devise, select, refine and structure movement in a personal response to various stimuli to communicate ideas.

On 4th May, year 9 were visited by two teaching artists from Sydney Dance Company. These artists introduced the backstory of Sydney Dance Company and ran a creative contemporary workshop. It was a unique opportunity to experience how the company creates and performs new and original movements. Dancers were guided through a contemporary technique warm up, challenged with improvisation and completed a compositional task from their production ‘Impermanence’.

Choreographed by Artistic director Rafael Bonachela, ‘Impermanence’ was influenced by the impact of the wildfires that ravaged Australia late in 2019 and the devastation of the Notre Dame fire. The idea of a roller coaster and its elements were used to create movement in this piece and drove the compositional task for the students.

The year 9 dancers left the incursion filled with excitement for the term ahead. Eager to start creating their own original movement using a piece of stimulus material. The students felt safe whilst working with these artists as they knew their limits but were still able to push them out of their comfort zone. Improvisation was a tricky element to pick up, however, once the students were approached by the artists they were able to model movement and assist each individual student. 

Students received feedback from the teaching artists at the end of the incursion to let them know that the movement they had created was in fact original and they did not just stick to movement from their usual dance class. The year 9 elective class were very thankful for this opportunity and I am excited to see what they create over the coming weeks. You may even get to see some of their pieces being performed at Magdalene Shines in week 9.

Miss Tahlia Cupillari

Dance Teacher