comment on 'You should be dancing, yeah!'

cjwainwr has a response,

I like this posting. Definitely. It responds to the colours, movements and liveliness of learning in arts education while linking dance with other learning areas. And yet (Oh No!...here he goes again...another wet blanket...) I just about threw 'fit' when I heard you ask your questions...

"Dance is one of the most basic of human expressions - right up there with singing and laughing.  So how come we do so little of it?  Why do we see it as something only people who are trained can do.  Ask someone.  Bet they say they 'can't dance'."

What on earth is the use of this presumption to me as a trainee-teacher who will be meeting parents and other family members on an almost daily basis.?

During my training in psycho-social education as well as in psychodrama, my supervisors instilled in me "Look for the health, look for the creativity, look for the ease and for the spontaneity in each and every one of your clients....it's there ...just bring it back to life.....Dis-ease is familiar. It is in lots and lots of people and places - including ourselves...So, look for the ease, for the life, for the vibrancy, for the dance and song....it's there somewhere. Keep ferreting around, digging and probing, using your strategies, Presume the original innocence is merely buried, presume the creative life lives even underneath all the illness."

Of course folk say " I can't dance", just like they say "I'm hopeless at maths", and "I'm depressed, anxious..." When you look further into these matters you see they have once before tapped their feet to the music, they have swayed before in their life, there are origins of the depression...Once upon a time they played...were infants, children, adolescents.


I reckon let's go into classrooms and into our encounters with parents presuming health; let's presume creativity, spontaneity....Sure, we know about cultural and social forces which make inroads against these and yet we also know a whole lot more.

John O'Toole states the connection between art and play as a pedagogic principle. All the adults who say "I can't...I won't" in relation to learning (to dance again, to appreciate their maths abilities) talk nonsense...We don't have to believe them !

Take heart from The Life of Brian... and, altogether now..."Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life....that's right luvvy...see, yer haven't lost it....it was always there; and now you're finding it again..."

Reference
O'Toole, J (2009) in Sinclair, C., Jeanneret, N., O'Toole, J. Education in the Arts. Victoria 3205: Oxford University Press.