Teaching Chinese Dance through Calligraphy
Two-hour class / workshop
Teaching Chinese calligraphy:
- Getting to know the calligraphy “four treasures”
- grind the ink stone
- handling the brush: student experiment
- draw horizontal lines
- draw vertical lines
- Learn the basic eight strokes: teacher demonstrate (EXPLAIN THE PROCEDURE AND SHAPE OF EACH STROKE), student imitate
- dot
- FIVE STEPS: LIFT, PRESS, LIFT, ROUND IT UP, REVERSE
- horizontal
- vertical
- left falling
- right falling
- folding
- lift
- hook
- interpret one stroke using movement
- dot: a fist, a jump, a fold, on the floor, arm, leg, motion
- Charade (stroke)
- each student pick a stroke and perform it in movement, other students guess
- Character creation
- student choose to combine strokes to create characters
- some of them may create real characters!
- Charade (character)
- student act out their characters
- other students can see their characters
- OR teacher writes out a few characters students created, and then have one student act and others guess
Clean up
A break
Teaching Dance:
- Watch calligraphy-inspired dance
- Lines Beyond Form
- Ink Passion
- Ribbon Dance
- a ribbon glued to a wooden stick
- 1-2-3-4: top right (1), top left (2), bottom right (3), bottom left (4)
- 5-6-7-8: up (5), down (6), arm swing clockwise (7-8)
- 1-2-3-4: body turn clockwise (1-3), up (4)
- 5-6-7-8: zigzag swerve down, knees bent at (4)
- 1-2-3-4: arm swing counter-clockwise, step left (1-2), lie down on right side of the body (3-4)
- 5-6-7-8: get up, back to standing
- 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8: improvise
- 1-2-3-4: facing 45 degrees to the left, front (1), back (2), jump and land with left foot at the front, front (3-4)
- 5-6-7-8: zigzag swerve to the right
Reflection:
- First two reflection questions
- What did you learn?
- What do you want to learn more?
- Group share
- Third reflection question
- What moments you felt frustrated / challenged?
- What moments you felt liberated?
- Group share
If you have more time, go deeper and have students complete their culminating projects: Student choreography as inspired by Chinese dances.
1. Inspired by Thousand Hand Bodhisattva (千手观音)
2. Inspired by Jasmine Flower (茉莉花)
Reflection:
Learning Chinese calligraphy is a mindful work. Teaching too. You cannot rush through something that requires mindfulness and focus. Therefore, although teaching the technicalities of stroke writing takes time, it is the necessary, and the best, way to learn. Slow and steady is the way to go.
The time spent on writing calligraphy may feel long, but it was the required foundation for understanding the dance movement inspired by the calligraphy.
The connection between calligraphy and dance is a connection between art on a flat medium to art in the spatial medium. It is a form of interpretation, a translation that remains faithful to the original yet allows individuality.
Although both calligraphy and dance require much discipline, both are also highly creative. The creativity, however, is built upon the discipline. Without working on the foundational techniques, creations will miss the point. Without creativity, it is droll imitation. Both discipline and creativity live symbiotically to make possible the aesthetic whole.
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