CHARACTERS Lesson

How will a cowboy move different from a ballerina?

One by one each student picks a CHARACTER to embody. You can hold up a CHARACTERS-Concept-card and ask who wants to be the “Robot” etc. Then we discuss all together how a robot would move and different kids get up and suggest specific moves for that character. What type of feeling or attitude do you expect from this character? How does playing this character make you feel?

The student who picked Robot then tapes his card to the black-board and writes his name under it. While this happens we already are discussing and exploring movements for the next character.

When all students have selected their characters we are ready to explore with music. To give everyone the chance to practice their character. A Circle JUMP game will be a good game to play here. In this game small teams of students lead each other in turn. Everyone gets to be the leader for their Circle.

Another good game for CHARACTERS is the Partner WAVE. Here students explore one on one, moving up and down an imaginery line. Use a “Mix-up” on the Partner Grid to exchange partners.

We finish the session with an All TRIANGLES Move game (Level 3) where every student will demo their CHARACTER-moves as the whole group follows loosely.

Sample Videos for the CHARACTERS Lesson

Principle of the Day

Style It!

After a few dances let’s talk about
• Creating various moves for a specific theme or character
• How can the concepts inspire creativity?
• How does practice make you a better dancer?
• Taking risks and doing things differently

We learned

• To move our body as a character other than our own
• We explored how an attitude or feeling about a specific role can change how we move
• That different characters have different feelings and attitudes
• To think outside the box and put ourselves in sombody elses shoes
• To explore different ways of doing things differently from how we usually do them