Dance Rotation 1

Theme: War and Conflict 

Students will study the art of creating choreographic movement to communicate a theme and narrative and learn how this can be used to inform their choreographic structure, chosen movements, music and costume. Students will use gestures such as Shield, salute, bomb, shoot, dive, spin and kick to create movement as a duet and small group. Students will also explore contact work, lifts, action/reaction and freeze frames. The class will put together a performance piece representing soldiers in battle using instrumental music. 

Learning how to use and interpret a theme in Dance is an important part of communicating with the audience. Relying only on the expression of our movement to tell a story or evoke an emotion and bring a piece of choreography to life is a skill in itself. A theme can inform the content of a piece of choreography and be used as a method of storytelling. This unit is predominately created by students under direction of the teacher and is linked to unit 2 at GCSE Creating from a theme and unit 3 Creating and planning for production.  

Dance Rotation 2

Theme: Around the World 

Students will study dance styles from around the world focussing on Rock and Roll dance, Capoeira and Bollywood dance. They will spend 2 weeks on each, learning about the history of the style and the set movements from each. Students will work in pairs and small groups to create their own choreography demonstrating their new learning.   

This unit is predominantly created by students following choreographic content of each style from the teacher. This unit builds cultural capital and develop students understanding of the dance styles from around the world. Learning a variety of dance styles allows for versatility in the way your body is able to translate movement and choreography.  This unit links to unit 2 and 3. Students can draw upon different dance styles for the Creating unit and Planning for production unit.