Performance and Pedagogy
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| 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.
