Dance Workshop #7

Dance Workshop #7 - Week 11 with Jacqui Dreessens

"Telling stories: Australian Bush dance"

Thursday 20th September 2012

This week we learnt about Australian culture in the form of the Bush dance. Specifically, we learnt the Stockyards Dance. 

This dance was for men and women. The men would be working hard all week shearing sheep and on a Friday/Saturday night they would meet with the girls and dance and have fun. It was a very social dance and an integral part of society as this was how people met each other and formed relationships.

The Stockyard Dance is full of energetic and locomotive movements. It originally comes from the English Morris Dance but has been transferred and transformed to the Australian Bush Dance and is unique in that way.

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For the warm up everyone walked around in the space and greeted each other without using words. We waved to each other, tapped each other's feet with our feet or bumped hips with each other. We explored different ways of 'saying hello' without saying a word.

To begin the dance, Jacqui firstly showed us the dance movements step by step with no music so we could hear and concentrate. Everyone formed a circle.

The girls started first and began with a curtsey. We walked in 3 steps and held out our 'skirts', bent our knees, dropped our head down to the ground and curtseyed. We then stepped the three paces backwards and watched the boys.

The boys had to bow. They too walked three steps into the circle, placed their left arm behind their back and their right arm on their stomachs, dropped their heads and bowed. 

Once the boys returned to the circle each partner would 'docey-do' by linking arms and skipping around in a small circle.

Then the girls would stand in front and their left hand would go to the side of their body and the right hand would go above the right shoulder - both hands would meet the boys hands. Together, the partners would walk forwards (the whole class walking around in a circle) and the boys would twirl the girls around as they were walking. 

Then each boy and girl would face each other, hold hands and sideways skip around the circle. Then the girls would move in and out of the circle (boys leading the girls).

After we'd dance the Bush dance we broke up into small groups and created our own greeting dance. The choreographic dance principals and devices we used in our group included:
- Rhythm
- Speed
- Directions
- Levels
- Pathways
- Dimension
- Percussive
- Addition
- Embellishment
- Repetition
- Transposition

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Safety:

There were a few safety issues that we talked about in regards to the Bush dance and primary aged children, such as during the 'docey-do' children may spin each other around too fast which might cause an accident/injury. 

Links to VELS:

Learning the Bush dance lends itself to linking in with Australian history. Students at Level 4 "demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of significant events in Australian history including the development of the wool industry, the 1850s gold rushes...they demonstrate an understanding of the histories of some cultural groups which make up Australia today. They make links and appropriate comparisons with contemporary Australia."
For students at level 4, the Bush dance would be a great way to tie in learning about the wool industry or where the dance originated from and by extension how white settlement occurred in Australia - ensuring also that the students are aware of and learn about the Indigenous Australians and the impacts on their life that white settlement made.

Personal Reflection

I really liked the Bush dance. It created a great atmosphere in the class and it felt like we were really there dancing just like young people would have done many years ago. I enjoyed how the boys had to 'show off' the girls and be gentlemen - it was a whole lot of fun!

References:

Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority, 2009, The Humanities - History - Level 4, State Government of Victoria, retrieved 10 October 2012, http://vels.vcaa.vic.edu.au/vels/interpersonal.html.