This chapter focuses on dance and learning in the early years, presenting a theoretical framework that reflects the changing Australian cultural context for dance. Building upon an earlier model for dance education, culturally responsive pedagogy is an inclusive approach to dance learning from birth to age eight. Key influences are introduced with attention given to aesthetic experiences, early dance relationships, ‘dance-play’, young children’s engagement with technology and the explosion of dance on screen. Consideration is given to established truths about dance and the emerging presence of Indigenous dance within dance education. Examples of dance artists in education settings, along with visual and transcribed examples, are provided, demonstrating how early years educators may support young children’s agency as critically responsive co-creative participants in dance.

Dance – often left to specialists outside the classroom – is a means by which children can explore the world through their whole bodies. For many learners who feel they lack the ability or the interest to pursue more academic subjects, this is where they need to be given opportunities to demonstrate their potential for success. This chapter focuses on forms and skills of dance and movement, methods for engaging children and the theoretical knowledge behind dance, as well as practical activities to use in the early childhood and primary classrooms. Linking to other Knowledge Learning Areas, as well as to wider school and curricular issues, this chapter aims to equip both the novice and the experienced educator in dance to confidently and knowledgably facilitate the learning and development of children. Personal and environmental health and safety issues will also be explored.

Wherever we are in society, we are surrounded by the Arts. This text has been designed by artists, and the words you read are just visual artworks representing the oral storytelling foundation of all societies. Its layout was designed by artists, using multiple media forms. You are reading it in an environment where the soundscape will hopefully allow you to concentrate. Your body is probably positioned to minimise discomfort and maximise efficiency, while communicating your current state of thought to all those around you (whether consciously or not). Surrounding you may be posters, objects, noises, people interacting with facial expressions, probably some communicating via Facebook, Instagram or other social media using increasingly advanced technologies. The Arts power our lives, yet too often we power down children as they enter formal education (preschool and upwards), stifle their natural forms of communication and interaction, and slowly destroy their ability to be creative and to think diversely.

Outlines the aims and rationale of this guide to The Rite of Spring, sketching the book’s structure across four parts: The Paris Premiere; Contexts; Performance and Interpretation; and Scholarship. Situates the volume within a scholarly context, exploring how it relates to the enormous quantity of published literature on The Rite of Spring – a literature that can be difficult to navigate, especially for newcomers to the work. Also proposes a new, historically sensitive way of approaching the original 1913 production, combining historical and musical perspectives with a focus on the ballet’s intense corporeal impact as noted by some of the first critics inside the theatre.

This chapter explores a handful of the many new productions of The Rite of Spring that have been staged since the ballet’s original performance in 1913. Introducing the topic by way of critical reflection on the challenges facing scholars and students of such choreographic reinterpretations, this account describes three of the most canonical revisions of the ballet (by Léonide Massine, Maurice Béjart and Pina Bausch) before dwelling principally on two more recent and seemingly self-reflexive versions: Yvonne Rainer’s RoS Indexical (2007) and Nora Chipaumire’s rite riot (2014).

Throughout this book, we have suggested that the notion of choruses offers a metaphor through which these diverse collectives can be understood. Granted, this metaphor is not a typical concept that historians ordinarily use to describe community life, such as the association or the network, which seem at first sight to offer a more stable descriptive framework. We nevertheless argue that the choral reference makes it possible to obtain fine-grained knowledge of the modulations of the Athenian city in 404/3, since it is anchored in Greek thought and social practices. Indeed, viewed through the lens of chorality, the Athenian community landscape appears in a new light, defined by plurality and contingency. Legal status is no longer a fixed barrier assigning place to individuals once and for all: Divergent temporalities constantly overlap and weave together the polyrhythmic fabric of the city. The question that guides the whole of our investigation is ultimately about the choral essence of the city. Is it possible to see the Athenian polis, and all the groups of which it is composed, as a choral song? Illustrating the scope of the Athenian social space does not consist only in describing its polyphony, but also in listening to the harmonics, be they consonant or dissonant, which cut across it.

“Philosophers of the Cabal” inaugurates a line of inquiry devoted to the Volk (people). A powerful critic of Kantian anthropology, Johann Gottfried Herder argued that the “spirit of a people [Volksgeist]” is grounded in a common structure of sensibility or Sinnlichkeit. This shared sensibility derives in part from the notion of the sensus communis theorized by British empiricists in the early eighteenth century. After tracing the influence of British aesthetics on Herder, the chapter moves forward to consider E. B. Tylor, a towering figure of Victorian anthropology known for the evolutionary theories that displaced Herder’s diversitarian model. I show that Tylor actually retained key Herderian premises regarding collective sensation, which modernists like W. B. Yeats then incorporated into a primitivist style. Hence the communalist aesthetics running from Shaftesbury through Herder and Tylor leads ultimately to modernists who came of age during the fin-de-siècle.

For Jerome Robbins, musical theatre dance provided spectacle, but its primary function was to communicate story, acting as a cohesive thread between visual, aural, and textual elements. Robbins turned dance into a common language in the world of the play, an extension of a character’s vocabulary. For West Side Story, Jerome Robbins envisioned a prominent ensemble comprised of singing–acting dancers responsible for conveying essential narrative elements. By centering the action of the ensemble, movement and music lead lyrics, book, and design in translating given circumstances and character action. He enhanced aesthetic unity, thematic synthesis, and flow by developing a choreo-direction process which integrated American Stanislavski-based method acting principles with staging and dance composition. This ultimately contributed to the legacy left by West Side Story on film, Broadway, and concert dance.

The British colonial invasion of the territories that would come to constitute the nation-state of Nigeria also planted the seeds for the birth of nationalist and anticolonial movements. This chapter traces the advent and growth of Nigerian nationalism across its different phases, beginning with the immediate aftermath of the colonial invasion until the period of the 1940s. This showed how the seeds of nationalist consciousness were sown in the resistance of traditional rulers to the colonial attacks on their political authority and territorial integrity. It also showed how the alliances of these rulers with emerging Western-educated elites formed the core of the struggles against the colonial administration in the post-amalgamation period. The chapter pays attention to a variety of internal and external factors, ranging from aggressive taxation and unrepresentative government to discrimination in the civil service, Western education, and the work of Christian missionaries. It traces three kinds of formations: political organizations such as the People’s Union, the NNDP and the Nigerian Youth Movement; media outlets such as the Lagos Times and the West African Pilot; and pan-African organizations like the NCBWA.

Chapter 4 unpacks the conundrum faced by Restoration acting companies. Audiences wanted new works, spectacle, and theatrical innovation, but the unforeseen consequences of the duopoly hobbled the ability of the companies to respond nimbly to changing conditions. Strapped for money and shackled by the costs of maintaining their expensive, high-tech playhouses, the acting companies were hard pressed to keep up with rival entertainments and products now enticing Londoners. Coffeehouses, spas, pleasure gardens, dance recitals, and music concerts all offered convenience, variety, and value for money. Goods in expanded bourses also tempted consumers. The theatre largely responded to the new world of goods and pastimes through allusion and imitation, oftentimes to brilliant results. Intermedial exchange between the worlds of music and theatre resulted in the gorgeous dramatic operas still staged today. The new consumerism featured in the sparkling, witty comedies spoofing the London elite. Nonetheless, allusiveness could not rival actual experiences and commodities, which often could be had for less money and greater convenience than an afternoon at the playhouse.

This chapter balances practical advice with aesthetic considerations to give an overview of a composer’s numerous roles in writing music for opera, dance, and theatre. The chapter begins with an overview of collaborative techniques and language, before understanding a bit more about how to shape musical ideas both by yourself and then through workshopping and rehearsal processes.