Moving together: Inter-generational dance, somatic education and urban citizenship
Though it is commonly thought that the future lies in the hands of children, might the future in fact lie in the relationship between the generations? From Fevered Sleeps’ Men and Girls Dance (2016) to Nora Bateson’s (2016) weaving together of complexity theory with embodied experience, practitioners, educators and theorists are increasingly looking to the potential of inter-generational relations and networks to facilitate healthy and creative attunement through the arts. What can be learned by following a child around the city or in entering Virtual Reality with them? How do mature movers develop somatic awareness that connects them with early developmental patterns through dancing? In this panel, we focus on somatics, dance and inter-generational creativity as practice as research methods for cultivating urban citizenship. Somatic dance education mobilises dancers at all stages of life. How can we as adults open our minds to thinking and moving in new ways through an intergenerational approach to dance as a lifelong and sustainable practice in dialogue with the environments we live in, including urban and digital infrastructures? At the same time, how might children flourish through opportunities for creative arts learning that attend to a sense of corporeality and environment as continuous with each other? The dancers and artists in this panel approach arts education, somatic dance practice and an expanded concept of choreography through site dance and technology as methods for developing creativity and expression in diverse groups of dancers at different ages and life stages:
Clare Battersby engages young people in creative dance processes in public sites and in dialogue with the natural world. She will discuss her recent practice with a group of dancers in urban sites around Auckland. In seeing all children as, always already dancers, she asserts the role of the teacher as providing the tools for crafting and forming dance as well as provoking, inspiring and cohering through relationship, in order to bring forth engaged citizenship.
Jenny Roche will discuss a teaching project in Brisbane, Australia which brought together primary school children and first year university dance students to explore the younger children's experiences of inhabiting digital environments. The project examined how intergenerational student groups can learn from each other through the catalyzing influence of performing arts practices.
Sue Hawksley will propose the notion of intra-corporeal inter-generationality. Drawing on her own practice and the work of practitioners such as Bartenieff, Cohen, Feldenkrais and Hartley, she argues that developmental movement patterns occur in overlapping stages, although for some, some stages are incomplete, missed, or unused. Through dance and somatic practices we can nurture awareness and use all of the fundamental patterns available to us, and in so doing deepen our learning about relationships and approaches to dance.
Linda Knight will discuss, ‘Creative Currents’ a performing arts education festival that took place at Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital in Brisbane, Australia. Linda devised the festival to provide opportunities for undergraduate education students to work with children attending the hospital and to create responses to the theme of Urban Citizenship. Performing arts education can be difficult to learn and apply for generalist teachers. This project, taking place through a community education context, facilitated children and adults working together to theorize and perform diverse and inclusive notions of citizens and citizenships in an urban landscape.