Inter-school Collaborative Dance Project

This project is born in 2012 when Jean-Baptiste Cochereau and I decided to start a collaboration about dance with our two Pre-Kindergarten classes. Each year our 2 classes agree to practice independently, and then meet to perform for each other and dance together at the end of the year.

Once a week our 2 classes practice creative dance through play-based dance games. We encourage students to improvise and express themselves through movement. We take videos of our students practicing, experimenting and talking about dance, and then we share the videos with our partner class. It is a wonderful way to incorporate dance in our curriculum by also developing thinking skills, communication skills and social skills.

This project works as a real dialogue between the 2 classes. Creative Dance: movement, emotions and relationships with others are the topics we explore with the students. At the end of the year my class usually travels to Jean-Baptiste’s school and the 2 classes dance together and then perform for each other. This annual project is a wonderful learning experience, the children learn to communicate through dance and love to exchange their new discoveries about movement with students from another school.

Dance and Visual Arts Project

Every year in class I like to explore how dance and other arts influence each other. My ideal curriculum is a hands-on one with a strong arts-integrated focus.

In my class children are painters, sculptors, architects, photographers, singers, actors and of course dancers. Exploring Visual Arts and Performing Arts at the same time give the children the opportunity to think across artistic disciplines and to relate to the academics in a very creative way.

We do Field Trips to Art Centers, Theaters and Museums. We learn about the elements of Art : Form, Shape, Line, Color, Space and Texture. All these different elements can express qualities such as movement and rhythm, space and depth, growth and structure, harmony and contrast, noise and calm and a wide range of emotions that can be transferred to the field of dance.

This annual project allows the children to develop their knowledge in different artistic fields, make a lot of connections and approach the arts in a more holistic way.