Dance Workshop #6

Dance Workshop #6 - Week 10 with Jacqui Dreessens

"Telling stories: Aboriginal to Bush Dance"

Thursday 13th September 2012

This week began with Jacqui introducing the Gahu Dance which is a dance from Ghana. It is a popular social dance performed to celebrate life at weddings, funerals and other formal celebrations. 

Over time the dance has been changed and transformed through the increasing exposure to Western culture. The dance can sometimes include 'Western' props such as sunglasses, ties and even stilettos. 

In Africa, the Westerners introduced identity cards into society in order for people to be known at all times. The Ghanians brought this notion of the identity card into the dance with hand actions as though they were holding an ID card in front of them whilst saying "Paper Say." 

A white handkerchief may also be used in the dance to symbolise the spirit world and traditions.

To start off the dance, Jacqui taught the group some locomotive movements that included: 

- stomping

- waving

- swaying

- puffing our chests out

Whilst we were learning and trialling different movements, the group was walking in a circular direction.

We then all faced into the circle and started the dance. Firstly, we bent our knees (keeping our bodies nice and relaxed), our shoulders were over our hips and our heads were light and relaxed as well.

Jacqui talked to us about how in African dance, you have your moonshine, sunshine and stars. The moonshine is your rump and this is where all power comes from. The sunshine is your chest and the stars are the pelvis - "where all the magic happens!" according to Jacqui!

The Gahu dance represents and honours the energy of the sun and the earth. Stomping on the floor is honouring Mother Earth and hands reaching up to the sky honours the sun.  

The dance is all about being at one with Earth and each other/the community.

During the dance we had to greet one another. We would face each other and join hands. We would hold our hands high above our heads and swing back and forth, from side to side. We also used our feet in the greeting and one foot of each dancer would move in and out whilst swinging their free arm. 

Safety:

As always, there are many safety issues that need to be addressed when in the dance classroom. One safety aspect that particularly stood out this week was to ensure that when we were stomping our feet on the ground our feet needed to be flat so that we wouldn't hurt any part of our feet.

Links to VELS:

The Gahu dance can be integrated into many different domains in VELS, such as the Civics & Citizenship domain. In this domain, at level 3, students "demonstrate understanding of the contribution of people from the many culturally diverse groups that make up the Australian community." 

You could talk about how western culture impacted on the Ghanians in their home country, and also how their culture has enhanced our own culture in Australia.

Personal Reflection

This week was all about unity, community, one-ness and togetherness. These concepts are concepts that I really value and coming from a relatively small community I felt very connected with the concepts that arised through this dance.

References:

Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority, 2009, Civics and Citizenship - Level 3, State Government of Victoria, retrieved 10 October 2012, <http://vels.vcaa.vic.edu.au/vels/civics.html>.