Week #4

As we began class teaching sessions, I was anxiously waiting to see what the first groups would come up for their dances. I had no expectations going into it because there weren’t a lot of directions on what we should be doing for our teaching sessions. It didn’t seem apparent to me until later on when I realized that this may have been done intentionally by Celeste because she didn’t want to influence us in any way when we were thinking of what we wanted to teach, she wanted our dances to reflect what we wish to explore. With no preconceived notions, we would be able to be in our own space and our own creativity. In the first week, we saw Jillian and Melissa with their math-oriented dance. Once they started teaching their dance, I thought it was the most brilliant idea ever because it incorporated something that they liked and managed to turn it into a movement that could be taught in class. It was so inspiring to see how they put everything together and the most impressive aspect of their dance was that they made it very organized. Each movement that they made had a purpose and had a message whether it was the slightest flinch or the most forceful kick. I picked up on a lot of tips for my teaching session from watching how easy and carelessly they were moving with no second thoughts about anything. They just went for it and taught the dance with no hesitation and eventually did an outstanding job. The way they structured the dance reminded me of my PE classes in elementary school when a group of kids would group together for a presentation and just come up with something that was not only creative, but it also was fun for everyone. It was energetic and the music definitely added something extra to the presentation. The following by Stephanie was also very cool, but from another perspective. Through her different movements, she was able to tell a story which I thought was very creative. No, she didn’t move as much as the previous group did, but each movement she made was very powerful and very detailed. When she was describing each element and moving at the time, I could actually envision these elements just from her words along with the movements. From these two performances and what I picked up from them, I’m able to now create my own movement for next week because they showed me that there are no boundaries when it comes to creativity, it’s just a matter of what I’m feeling inside and what truly inspires me.

Week #3

  For our third lecture, we were privileged to have Kathryn Ricketts as a guest speaker and she was able to share some of her interesting ideas with us. One of the activities she had us to do was for us to pick up a pencil and simply write about which was similar to the free-flow writing from our earlier classes. I’m starting to realize the power of free-flow writing, it allows me to essentially ramble on and talk about things without having to worry about being criticized for writing anything that isn’t deemed correct. I’m also starting to realize that type of writing isn’t as easy as I thought it was. At all points during writing, I am constantly reading over everything that I’ve written because I’ve been trained to do. Rereading everything I’ve written is something that is very natural to me because in other classes, proof reading is very important because it decreases the margin of error on our papers. In this case though, rereading causes more errors because we end up erasing everything that is natural about free-flow writing  Then she told us to create a movement or physical emblems using the pencil as something that would not be associated with its original use. I thought that was activity was very interesting because growing up, we’ve always associated certain items with specific activities, but for this activity we had to display the items in a completely different way. The activity was harder than it originally appeared because our brains have been trained a certain way and it was difficult to escape that, but when I did come up with a movement, it allowed me to see that I’ve been limiting by creativity due to associating pencils with only activities related to school.

Week #2

 The second lecture was a great experience for me because I was more comfortable with the people around me along with moving differently in general. Celeste seemed to incorporate all these different types of movement, but I noticed that a lot of it was very spontaneous and seemingly very natural. This made me realize that movement is very natural and it’s only becomes forced or unnatural when we over-think the actions. This drew a parallel to another point that was made about the writing that we’ve been taught to do in University versus the free-flowing writing that we’ve been doing in this class. When we write something non-stop without being concerned about the structure or the content of the writing, we tend to write a lot more. The problem is that we’ve been trained to write a specific way in University which is why we tend to critique our writing to the point where the writing is very technical and not natural at all. Finally, we continued with the same group activities that we did from the previous week and the familiarity of myself with some of the other people in the class made moving more relaxing because I recognized my partners, so I was able to do certain movements without feeling weird about it.

Week #1

The first EDUC 330 class was a very interesting for me because I had no idea what to expect going into the class. I originally took the course because I wanted to try something different and I’m glad I took this class. As an Economics major, I have to work with a lot of math questions on a daily basis and even though I do enjoy that type of learning, I also wanted to explore other courses that would give me an opportunity to learn from a different perspective. As the class started and we started doing warm-ups, I felt a little uncomfortable at first because it was so different from what I’ve been trained to do in my four years at SFU. These activities reminded me more of what I used to do as a child and it was just odd for me to move around in a room full of adults. However, as I saw the rest of class doing the thing, it put me at ease and allowed me to enjoy the activities without any stress of being embarrassed. One thing that I noticed when I was doing the activities is that my athletic background really came out. All of my movements were very intense and high paced which may be partially due to the fact that it sort of reflects the intensity level during my basketball practices in High School. With the activity, I also noticed that movement isn’t just about one individual as we are influenced by everyone around us. When we were told to make a shape within our group, it seemed we all started to copy each other unintentionally. This first class was interesting and I look forward to learning more about movement.