Year 7 & 8 Dance
Unit 1: Everybody Dance Now
In this introductory Dance unit, students will explore dance in popular culture. Students will investigate how dance is used to communicate meaning in the 21st century. Students will be exposed to a variety of styles of dance. Students will experience the art of choreography and will learn characteristic steps from popular culture dance (dance of now). Students will work in the style of Hip Hop for the Making - Performing task and a style of their own choice for Task 2 (suggested: contemporary or modern). They will create their own choreographic sequence, selecting and organising the dance elements of form, space, motif, dynamics, and relationship and the choreographic devices of repetition, contrast and canon. Through experiencing choreography, the students will respond by documenting their own creative process and identifying and analysing the use of dance elements and choreographic devices. Students will evaluate how well the dance has communicated an intended style and meaning.
Year 9 Dance
Unit 1: Dancing through the Decades
In this unit, students build on their awareness of the body and how it is used in particular dance styles. Over the course of the semester, students will explore meaning, interpretation, forms and elements. Students will investigate social and historical contexts of dance as they make and respond to dance.
Students will learn, rehearse and perform a teacher-devised dance piece and perform this in pairs, demonstrating their understanding of style and theme through technical and expressive skills, increase their confidence, accuracy, clarity of movement and projection as performing artists.
Students will be exposed to a variety of social dance styles. Students will respond to stimulus by writing a letter of recommendation regarding their chosen social dance era. Students will analyse and evaluate the impact the choreographer's choices have on viewers.
Students will extend their choreographic intentions, working individually to create their own choreographic work in response to a variety of social dance styles. Students will create a Choreographic Statement to accompany their work, analysing their own use of the elements of dance and the choreographic devices. In this statement, students will evaluate their choices in the context of the style.