The Winger » Performance and Pedagogy

Performance and Pedagogy

March 18, 2007 at 8:10 pm · Filed under dance, books, directors, teaching, TONY, theatre, class, Brazillian, students, education, politics, dance teacher, performance, breaking

| | Posted by Tony Schultz

Teaching is a kind of performance and through performance we do a bit of teaching. As performers, dancers should have an awareness of how their work functions; what kind of stories, or lessons, are they imparting to the audience and how are those narratives instrumental? Similarly, educators should have an awareness of the artistry in their teaching work.

Pedagogy is the science and art of teaching. As an educator, I think about how to present ideas in a way that is both meaningful and transformative. Brazilian born Paulo Freire, author of Pedagogy of the Oppressed, is famous for his contribution to educational theory through the development of “critical pedagogy.” For me and Freire, the goal of teaching should not be to reproduce a body of knowledge but rather to enable people to develop their own critical consciousness. Teachers should impart methods for asking questions rather than simply prescribing answers.

So what does this have to do with performance? Let’s turn to another radical Brazilian scholar and contemporary of Freire, Augusto Boal. This writer, director and cultural activist developed a political theatrical form called Theatre of the Oppressed. Boal used this theatric form for the purpose of radical political education and mobilization. Brazil’s military junta of the late 1960’s found this work so threatening that in 1971 Boal was arrested, tortured and exiled to neighboring Argentina where he published Theatre of the Oppressed.

Dancers should think critically about pedagogy as recipients of it, though their training, and providers of it, through their performance. The Winger is an amazing forum for opening up this conversation and engaging in transformative discourse with dancers, educators and spectators. Pedagogy and performance are intimately linked and as the video above demonstrates, dancing out ideas at the chalkboard has the capacity to create powerful movements.

Music: Ablution by Outside

This dance is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 license.Enjoy.

Permalink

Jessica said,

March 18, 2007 @ 10:37 pm

Tony, Your brilliance in choreography and as a professor never ceases to amaze me! As a poly sci major, I spend quite a bit of time thinking about Friere and critical consciousness. One thing that Friere suggests which could be interesting- the idea of dehumanization. I think there can be a tendency in the classroom to focus just on technique and the body, to ignore the human, emotive part of dance. I’ve always wondered why there isn’t a more through discussion of artistry in the classroom. Thanks for opening up a whole new dimension of this subject- I can’t wait to tell my professors about it!
-Jess

tonya said,

March 19, 2007 @ 5:23 pm

This is all really fascinating. Who knew there were all these Brazilians involved in dance / performance theory?! Oh so much to learn and so little time… The mind/body (false) dichotomy has always bothered me, so I love the idea that dance-making is an intellectual enterprize and discussing it on that level as well

Btw, I’m excited to view your new dance piece, but have to wait till I get home tonight (my dinosaur at work doesn’t take kindly to Quicktime…)

Chimene said,

March 19, 2007 @ 6:53 pm

Tony,

The most interesting thing about you is that you have a PhD in physics and are a professor at a major university, yet everytime I watch you dance, you look like a 17-year-old street dancer, which is a compliment by the way. What an interesting dichotomy.

SanderO said,

March 20, 2007 @ 1:17 am

Tony,

That was a hoot! Thanks for sharing that. Why do you suppose the hip hop dance, break dancing does so much with the ground as opposed the the leaping etc of ballet?

tony said,

March 22, 2007 @ 2:44 pm

Thanks for your comments everybody. I will pickup this train of thought in a couple of days. There is so much to be said.

First I have to clarify some things so that I don’t misrepresent myself. You flatter me Chimene. I am finishing my PhD in physics so it would be wrong to say that I have it. I plan to do my final defense before the end of the year. Then you can call me Dr Dance! I also have to correct you on the second part since Sarah Lawrence is a college and though I am on the faculty I do not hold a professorship. That being said, thanks for the complement about my dancing.

SanderO, interesting question about breaking vs ballet and their respective use of the horizontal and vertical planes of representation. You could write a whole essay on this. Why is ballet so tied up with verticality? I believe it is tied up with ballet’s history as an aristocratic form and power relations inherent in representations of dominance. Height provides dominance by its ability to tower over other competing elements and it ability to provide more of the landscape into view. If a king rules over all that he surveys then he better survey as much as possible and thus get as high as possible. Of course things are not this simple but the development could go along these basic lines of thought.

Thanks for your interest. There will be space in the future to say more.

SanderO said,

March 24, 2007 @ 2:29 am

Tony,

I live next to Bronxville and perhaps one day we might have a coffee or green tea at the Starbucks over there and talk art theory. Your bit about vertivcality and horizonatlity is interesting. I would like to delve more into these ideas. If you know of any published material which deals with all this, could you post them?

SanderO

thewinger.com » Performance and Pedagogy 2.0: The Reading Group said,

March 26, 2007 @ 1:16 pm

[…] Last week I wrote (and danced in) a post entitled Performance and Pedagogy, presenting the work of two radical scholars, Paulo Freire and Augusto Boal. In it I discussed the relationship between performance and education and how each could raise critical consciousness by promoting active dialogue. The Winger (and this whole corner of the blogosphere for that matter) is an ideal space for performing this type of dialogical dance. In a recent conversation with Tonya Plank regarding dance and politics, we had the idea of forming a reading group to add more depth to our discourse. […]

RSS feed for comments on this post · TrackBack URI