Literacy and Movement
Sensation to Notation
I am so excited for my upcoming FOUR HOUR workshop for the Central Carolina Orff chapter on March 16th at 9 AM in Durham, North Carolina.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFO ON THIS WORKSHOP!
The workshop is called “Musical Movement and Igniting Joy.” We’ll be using Dalcroze principles to deliver musical activities that keep the BIG SMILE on everyone’s face!
From the Archive:
Stepping Rhythms
One of my strongest recollections of my childhood Eurhythmics classes involved stepping rhythms. Something about moving your whole body through space and time creates an unforgettable memory! The body WANTS to move in time. Harnessing this natural inclination to establish a “groove” with the body and WILL the feet to establish the groove of your intention is a primary goal of any Dalcroze practice. Managing weight and momentum makes rhythms feel more expressive and connects them to sensation, rather than simply to abstract ideas like “counting” or duration. If you’ve been following me for very long you know I have an aversion to counting music, and lately I have been making an effort to scrub my lessons of ANY numbers. In this post I’ll lay out a CLASSIC Dalcroze sequence that results in students performing a rhythm in a highly assessable format. But first:
We had a small group watching LIVE at this masterclass (I think the time change threw people for a loop) but here is the video of the meeting. We covered some strategies for using Dalcroze and MusicXT principles to teach literacy and bring students into reading music more naturally. In this workshop I discuss the idea of SENSATION to NOTATION… which simply means that we use the FEELING of a concept to associate with the notation, instead of the theory or other abstract construct. There are some games and activities here that don’t appear anywhere else on the platform, so definitely check it out!