Too many cooks? A framework for dance making and devising

Abstract

During my doctoral studies, I constructed the Didactic-Democratic framework model for the teaching of choreography in the higher education sector in the UK (2002). Initially the model emerged solely from my personal experience as dance lecturer in the British university system; it was trialled over many years of programme and module design with colleagues and with undergraduate dance students following choreography modules through three years of full-time study. Briefly, the model presents a framework for approaching dance making and devising through a continuum of five distinct approaches to the generic choreographic process. The design of the model assumes that the dance practitioner has some knowledge and understanding of choreographic craft, and related contextual theory. The model puts forward a series of roles for the choreographer in relation to the dancer participants, and identifies shifts in skills, methods and interaction. The elements are placed into a flexible, working framework, organised in such a way as to demonstrate the value of approaching some aspects of choreography from a directed, ‘teaching by showing’ approach, termed ‘didactic’; and dialogically, the value of learning to work in a shared, cooperative, collaborative approach, termed ‘democratic’. It is understood that in practice there is slippage between these stages of the framework: that is, dance making in the studio may utilise several of these processes in the course of making a single choreography.

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