Dance Journeys with Youth Dance England

Yesterday I attended a conference held by Youth Dance England at the Northern Ballet School. The theme of the day was that everybody has a different dance journey, and the seminars throughout the day were related to the facilitation of young peoples dance journeys.

The day was fantastic. I saw some great lectures and heard about some very interesting research, and got a real insight into how Youth Dance as a whole is coping with the recent changes to education the government are making. I also got some great networking done, meeting the youth and community dance director for Youth Dance England who encouraged me to apply for a Project Managing job that she thought I would be great for! I also got to meet the Head of Youth Dance England; the person who would choose whether or not to employ me. I found the whole experience of being there and being involved empowering and inspiring, and also reassuring  being around so many other practitioners who run into the same obstacles and struggle with the same hurdles that I do.

I wanted to share some of the issues and debates that came out of the conference, as I think a lot of BAPP students will find them extremely interesting. This blog will be the first of a few reviewing what I took from the conference.

The first talk was from Linda Jasper MBE, Director of Youth Dance England.
She first spoke of Arts Council figures showing that in the last few years the number of dance activities had doubled, and that the number of people making up dance audiences had tripled. This is all with only 11% of the Art Councils funding.

The popularity of dance among young people is second only to football.
She pointed out that "Dance is the only activity that combines physical literacy with imagination and creativity." Jasper 2012.

She believes the effects of the implementation of EBACCs, and more importantly the exclusion of Arts from the EBACC, is going to have devastating effects on our national bank of artists and creative people. With this proposed system in place, "we won't have the means to produce what we did in the olympic ceremonies this year" Jasper 2012.

A point she made that was particularly of interest to me was the effect this is going to have on male participation in dance. Most boys will not actively seek out dance outside compulsory classes, and therefore if dance is not included in the curriculum  far less boys will be introduced to dance and this will be greatly damaging to the dance sector!

I would urge EVERYBODY that reads this to go straight to www.baccforthefuture.com and sign the online petition that calls for an enquiry into the inclusion of Arts in the Ebacc. There are only 17000 signatures so far. I know that there are more people out there who don't want to see Arts disapear from schools, so please sign the petition.

Literature Review: Young Children and Movement: The Power of Creative Dance by Connie Bergstein Dow, Mar2010, Vol. 65 Issue 2, p30-35

In this Article the Author talks about the benefits of creative dance and movement in children, specifically primary school children. 

She structures her argument as a list of the benefits of creative movement, elaborating on each one. I have condensed her argument into an overview of her views on each benefit, and a selection of quotes that Dow uses to support her Article:

Access for all children:

Dow argues that creative movement can be accessed by any child, because it requires little or no equipment, other than a spacious room. It can also be adapted to suit disabilities, changing movements for children who are physically impared. For example, a child in a wheelchair could throw their arms in the air instead of doing a jump, or create a letter shape with their hands instead of their whole bodies.

Curriculum Enrichment:

Dow believes creative movement can be used as a vehicle for any subject or theme, helping bring the topic alive and engage the children.

Physical Development:

Incorporating creative movement into a primary school childs day helps to develop their 

“coordination, body control, balance, stamina, and overall strength.” Dow 2010.

Antidote to obesity:

Dow argues that incorporating movement into every class would be an extremely effective way of combatting childhood obesity: 

“Incorporating active, enjoyable, creative movement into classroom routines is just what the health professionals ordered!” Dow 2010

Social and Emotional Development:

Children learn to work as a group. “Creative movement is one of the best ways for children to learn the social skills needed for working together” (Gilbert 2002)

The National Dance Education Organization states, 

"Dance promotes psychological health and maturity. Children enjoy the opportunity to express their emotions and become aware of themselves and others through creative movement. A preschool child enters a dance class or classroom with a history of emotional experiences. Movement within a class offers a structured outlet for physical release of feelings and emotions” (CNDEÜ 2009).

Creativity:

“In the years ahead, children will enter a global workforce. We need to teach children to look at problems in new ways, to practice critical thinking skills, and to learn collaboration and cooperation in finding new solutions.” (Dow 2010)

Dow believes that creativity can practiced and enhanced through creative movement in schools.

The mind body connection: Movement and the brain:

“Research shows that movement and exercise can spark the growth of new brain cells and facilitate learning” (Ratey 2008)

"Movement, a natural process of life, is now under- stood to be essential to learning, creative thought, and high level formal reasoning. It is time to consciously bring integrative movement back into every aspect of our lives and realize, as 1 have, that something this simple and natural can be the source of miracles" (Hannaford 1995. 214)

"Exercise improves learning on three levels: first, it optimizes your mind-set to improve alertness, attention, and motivation; second, it pre- pares and encourages nerve cells to bind to one another. which is the cellular basis for logging in new information; and third, it spurs the development of new nerve cells from stem cells in the hippocampus" (Ratey,2008, 53). 

"Building muscles and conditioning the heart and lungs are essentially side effects. I often tell my patients that the point of exercise is to build and condition the brain" (Ratey, 2008, p. 3).

She summaries thusly:

“Evidence is mounting about the benefits of movement in the learning process. Creative dance is the perfect vehicle for enhancing the mind-body connection in young children and an important part of early education. Once educators become familiar with movement and its many benefits, instead of asking. "What is creative movement?" the question will be, "Why not creative movement?"” (Dow 2010)

This Article is directly relevant to my study. It is concentrating on the benefits of creative movement, which is the foundation of dance. It will be interesting to see if there is a link between the benefits Dow perceives primary children receive through creative movement, and the benefits of participating in dance teachers and secondary age students perceive. Some of Dows points will be slightly to complex to justifiably link to my research results i.e cellular structure of the brain etc. But it might be possible to draw links between Dows arguments of Access for All and curriculum enrichment and the opinions of students and teachers about how dance participation benefits the students.