I've always been interested in writing, so it would seem natural that I began work in my Graduate Seminar class on an annotated bibliography of dance writing books. Specifically, I was looking for texts that would solidify my hunch: artists that write articulately also choreograph articulately. While I didn't find the exact source that I was looking for, I did discover a lot of "how-to-write" books that seem applicable for "how-to-choreograph." After I completed the semester-long course, I promptly filed my rather large bibliography into a closet and forgot about it.
About three years ago, I began to think of ways that I could reinforce the movement goals I was teaching in my modern dance technique classes. If I was introducing a new movement principle, like how to easily connect the head to the tailbone in a contraction, I wondered how I might reinforce this concept so that students had a better understanding of its application to dance. One way to reinforce the concept was to ask students to find images of curves in nature or other areas of their life not directly related to dance. Using my earlier research in dance writing as a foundation, I also decided to ask my students to write about the idea of connecting the head to the tailbone. I provided an open-ended prompt that was sure to make them think, but more importantly, it would make them process their feelings about the subject matter. For example, one week we focused solely on integrating the head with the rest of the body when dancing. That week's journal prompt began, "with my head, I...." Students were encouraged to write not only about what they may physically do with their head, but also what they felt about their head. Interestingly, some students wrote that they spend very little time thinking about their heads, and that this lack of awareness probably came through in their dancing. They took for granted that their head was an important part of their dancing body. After all, it just always remained on top of the spine, in charge of thinking about or directing movement.
I began to introduce my movement units with more and more journal prompts. After a ten minute writing session, I'd ask if any students wanted to share a particularly lucid passage or discovery from their journals. Many students wrote about feeling uncomfortable "emoting" in class. They were not accustomed to noticing their feelings as they relate to the movement principle in dance class. However, those students who identified a level of discomfort in their journal writing were also able to quickly move beyond these emotional blocks and experience the dance class in a deeper way.
Not all of my students love the journal writing process at the beginning of a new unit in dance. They'd rather get up and move, break into a sweat, and feel a sense of accomplishment at how hard they pushed their physical selves. But these same students who show restlessness when writing have begun to make huge discoveries about themselves too, which is probably why they are reluctant to process life through their journals. Whether students love or hate journal writing, all are encouraged to write using their authentic voice, or what bell hooks calls the "engaged voice" in her text, Teaching to Transgress. Students are to "communicate... by choosing that way of speaking that is informed by the particularity and uniqueness of whom [they] are speaking to and with" (11).
This fall I introduced a unit based on Irmgard Bartenieff's Yield/Push. At the beginning of the unit I asked my students to respond in their journals to three prompts: When I yield, I..., When I push, I... I am a yielder/pusher because.... Students were encouraged to reflect on the physical properties of yielding and pushing, and then to determine ways in which they yield or push through life. Finally, I asked them to identify themselves as yielders or pushers. Not surprising, some students immediately identified themselves as pushers. They push their way through life, friends, school and very rarely compromise or yield to a situation. Some people didn't realize how much yielding they do in a given day, and this revelation explained why it was so hard for them to perform sharp, accented movement in class. Students were able to identify their way of navigating through life and then apply it to their strengths or weaknesses as dancers.
I've begun compiling a list of journal prompts that could be used by dance instructors in various classroom settings: as part of a technique class, a choreography class or even a dance theory class. Here is a brief sample of journal prompts from the list:
With my head, I...
In my pelvis, I...
The scapula relates to the pelvis because...
My arms are important when...
I feel... (and then later after dancing or improvising) Now I feel...
I get frustrated when I...
Energy comes up from the floor, through my body, and...
I'm currently teaching a beginning choreography class, and as part of the classroom activities, each student is required to have an artist journal. We use these journals not only as a place to perform writing exercises, but also as a place for them to note interesting things about their surroundings or their lives... things that could eventually become motivations for their choreographic work. Because I value the artist journals so much, I give students a significant amount of time at the beginning of the semester in class to decorate their journals. I want them to feel a connection to the journal so that they feel proud to share their innermost secrets or creative ideas in it.
I will continue to create and collect journal prompts that can be used in the dance classroom. I hope to include the prompts as part of a book about journal writing in the dance classroom sometime in the future. If you have questions or would like more information about journal writing in a dance class, please don't hesitate to contact me!
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