Emily Bayles and Marilyn Berrett, Department of Dance
Introduction
In Asian cultures, a lack of creativity shows a hindering element to the success and progress of the Chinese dancers’ education. Keeping with tradition, the “purpose of the arts was not the making of ‘art’”1. A few methods of dance pedagogy put into action have enhanced the students’ ability to expand their knowledge and individual voice in the world of dance “rather than the creation of “perfect” art”2.
Methodology
Through our use of ethnographic observational research in a nontraditional setting we objectively observed and described classroom etiquette, warm up/routine, cultural influences and the presence of tradition during our participation in daily class. Dance students danced in their normal undergraduate and also graduate technique and folk dance classes while we observed them silently. This information was taken in note-taking from our discussions with and observations of dance professors at Minzu University.
Results
Throughout the course of this study, many results were found and evaluated by the researchers. We have concluded that the two different groups of students danced and reacted differently to their teachers’ instruction.
Undergraduate students…
- Never demonstrated a warm-up except by one, single class taught by a teacher with Western dance experience.
- Knew the history and background of each dance performed
- Were called on individually in front of the whole class if they performed part of the dance wrong.
- Sensed a form of seniority with their teachers
- Followed every instruction given and never spoke unless called on.
Graduate students…
- Created movement daily with their individually-designed formations and stories
- Followed loosely-given instructions for prompts on the movement they were creating for the day
- Spoke freely with each other while listening to instructions and creating their group movement.
- Tended to keep their formations in circles, use traditional Chinese music, and moved in rounded movement with their arms and legs.
Discussion
The two main points that we discussed were that:
- All graduate and undergraduate students showed to be much more creatively influenced than we previously thought
- The undergraduate students did not get the opportunity in their classes to showcase their creativity like the graduate students did
These points proved to us that dancers are innately creative and are in need of a class structure that will enhance and encourage that creativity to flourish.
Conclusion
While there is no concrete evidence on the direct results of Chinese dance pedagogy on their students’ creativity, the results from this research shows that there is a correlation between limited training of the instructor and restricted use of the creativity of a child while dancing. While there is a large difference in undergraduate versus graduate students, the dancers showed a great deal of creative ability based-off of their instructor’s previous training and experience in foreign country training. Overall, the older students get the more opportunity they have to creatively create movement, but this needs to be fostered at a younger age as well to encourage early-on creativity.