Lesson 1-2

  • Students engage with the each cultural form (i.e., by thinking about how the elements of dance are used within these forms), but should not be encouraged to copy the movements without guidance from a community practitioner whose personal experiences align with those of the cultural forms explored.
  • When creating their own movement phrases, teachers might encourage students to think about how to explore their own preferred dance movements by applying the elements in a way that responds to what they have seen in African dance or Hip Hop dance (e.g., if they notice angular shapes, they modify a preferred movement with more angular shapes).

Lesson 3-5

  • Rather than asking students to create movement phrases that are based on African dance and based on Hip Hop, students might focus on creating two styles of movement that reflect the intentions, purposes, or messages of each cultural form of dance. One style of movement might emphasize one intention while the other emphasizes another. 
    Intentions, purposes, or messages will depend on what specific cultural forms were explored in class and should be based on interviews/video they have watched or input from a community practitioner, but could include celebration, unity, strength of the community, entertainment, personal expression, social connection, resistance, etc. There will not be a neat dichotomy between intentions, purposes, or messages that are informed by African dances or Hip Hop dances, so students should take care to choose two that are distinct enough that they can create contrast.
  • Students could be coached to explore different ways to approach messages like "strength in community" by thinking about what strength means in their own community and how it might look, for example. 
    The goal would be to build students' ability to make connections with concepts while standing firmly in their own identities and responding to these specific movement vocabularies with their own movement vocabularies.
  • Students might be inspired by the movement vocabularies of African dance and Hip Hop dance (i.e., by thinking about how the elements of dance are used within these forms), but should not be encouraged to copy the movements without guidance from a community practitioner whose personal experiences align with those of the cultural forms explored.