Residencies

These units explore dance as a form of literacy / text / communication / expression.

• Dance Speaks—Students learn about African-American and minority dancers through literature and media, explore different dance forms, and create movement to express an idea about themselves.

• Dance — Write!— Developed in partnership with Kindergarten teacher Cynthia Clancy, this unit connects creative movement to writing skills (letter formation, word formation, narrative, and story-telling).

• Dance Upon A Time—Connects creative movement and children's literature with interactive storytelling.  Students embody characters, express vocabulary, & perform parts of the story while developing motor skills, spatial awareness & sequencing. Expanded units of study include fairy tales, Jack and the Beanstalk, Little Cloud, Follow the Line around the World, to name a few.

• Greetings Through Movement—Explores connections between reading, writing, & dance. Students create a group dance inspired by greeting cards and personal letter writing to express their ideas & feelings. 

• Moving Morals—Students create dance phrases that communicate the meaning of morals of selected fables.

• Poetic Dances—Students create & perform dance phrases inspired by their own or others' poetry. Topics include rhythm, structure, descriptive or figurative language, self-expression through words & movement. 

SOCIALLY RELEVANT TOPICS:  Participants explore social topics and the dancer as a communicator in society. 

• DANCE as ACTIVism—This unit empowers participants to communicate through dance and to create and perform a meaningful message of change for their community.

• Breaking down Barriers—As a universal language, dance brings diverse groups together to address topics such as bullying, disability, or English as a second language. (Also, see ‘Dance Speaks’ above.)

• Environmentally Dancing—Create & perform a dance based on Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax, or real-life environmental issues, as part of an awareness campaign.

In these units, students discover uncanny similarities between scientists & dancers along with surprising relationships in dance and science.

• A Movement Experiment—Students explore scientific practices, experiment to solve movement problems and determine unknown dance vocabulary, and present their findings in a movement phrase.

• Force and Motion—Students examine the forces that act upon (their own) dancer’s body.

• Speed, Velocity, Stage Directions— Students embody speed and velocity through elements of dance.

• SPACE Out!—Students explore ‘space’ as scientists and as dancers, learn how dancers orient themselves onstage with a coordinate grid, & use movement of the sun and shadows as inspiration to create dance.

• Energy—Students embody aspects of potential and kinetic energy and explore how dancers use energy in creating and expressing ideas through movement.

DANCE ROCKS!  As a former geologist, Laurel is thrilled to connect two of her passions in this series.

• Rock Cycle—Students observe & describe rock samples, translate their descriptions into movement, and learn about Earth processes that create the rock cycle.

• Volcanoes and Dance— Students act as scientists & dancers as they examine volcanic landforms & eruptive styles through the elements of dance. As their understanding of dance & volcanoes grows, students perform choreography with intent & meaning.

• Weathering and Erosion—Students explore flow, movement, shape and other elements of dance in connection with processes of erosion to create movement phrases demonstrating these processes.

• Plate Tectonics—Improvisation brings plate tectonics concepts to the human scale. Students explore movement of plate boundaries resulting in mountains, valleys, earthquakes, erosion, and more.

More STEM to STEAM Explorations

• Engineering a Dance—Students use the engineering design process & collaboration to create choreography.

• Exploring Body Systems— Students kinesthetically explore different body systems and examine the importance of body knowledge in dance.

• Geometry and Dance—Students embody spatial concepts of geometry using dance.

• Monterey Bay Ocean Ecosystems—Students use creative movement to explore adaptations of life in different habitats of Monterey Bay.