Having been inspired by the collaboration with Juilliard and NAE’s fresh approach to learning, developing our own Performing Arts course at this level was a natural step for BISW. Over the past week and a half, the benefits of teaching performing arts holistically have already become evident. Students have explored the concept “breaking rules”, where do our “rules” come from, why are they there and what happens when creative people want to break them? This is an on-going topic that will lend in a self-devised piece based around the concepts explored.
This week had the team looking at composers such as Penderecki and John Cage who all had new perspectives on what music should be, how to treat sound and notate these new concepts. Students used scores and film to understand the works and then composed their own version. They then went on to learn about where these western rules came from and discussed why the reactions happened.
This was supported by a dance lesson from the Juilliard creative classroom exploring Merce Cunningham’s Chance procedures- a unique way of choreographing. As we experienced this first hand through doing and then later watched “Rainforest”- our understating and perception of these concepts really started to grow. In Drama students have started to explore the work of Konstantin Stanislavski and the work of Bertolt Brecht with the same theme in mind “ breaking the rules”. It’s been a great week and a half and having the students explore this statement from multiple arts perspectives has really deepened their understanding and inquisitiveness. Next week we continue to explore this theme with a mind towards our first creative project work.
Watch this space!