The Feeling of Fall
Autumn is my favorite time of year and this lesson captures its magic through movement and song! The lesson features scarf technique and singing. But first:
Housekeeping:
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Mark your calendars!!! I am presenting a workshop for the Music ConstructED platform entitled “Movement IS Music - Dalcroze Strategies for Public School Classrooms” on November 28th (8PM Eastern, 7 PM Central). This will be a virtual event, and I hope everyone in this SubStack community will join me! I’ll be going over some of the most popular activities posted here, expanding on them, answering questions, and providing some deeper insights. I will be presenting the workshop live, but I believe there is an asynchronous option, if you can’t make the live version.
You can sign up for the workshop HERE
On a previous episode of The New Dalcrozian podcast, Lauren Hodgson and I swapped resources and discussed how we might use them in our classes. One of the resources on my list was a great book edited by Aaron Butler called “Anne Farber: Collected Works.” You can buy the book on Amazon by clicking here.
The book is full of interesting pieces written and arranged by the master teacher of the New York Dalcroze community, Anne Farber. I presented one of these activities in the podcast, which if you haven’t listened to it… where have you been? I love this book, the songs are absolutely beautiful and playable. They are also SO useful. Organized by season, you can easily find a piece to slide into just about any lesson. There are wonderful canons and playful stories.
The song I presented on the podcast was called “Swirling” and in this post, I will expand a bit and provide some more insight into how I use this song.
Whenever I use a “prop” such as a ball or a hoop, I always begin by orienting the students to it. We spend some time exploring the possibilities and integrating the item with our own movement. It is important that the students use the prop to motivate and inspire better BODY movement, not as a toy or a distraction. When I focus on how to build a movement vocabulary with a scarf, I first begin with a small movement of the wrist. We bounce the scarf, concentrating on the movement of the wrist, and adding some small knee flexion. The next movement might be what I call the “wave” which uses the elbow. Finally we’ll do the “swoop” which utilizes the full arm up to the shoulder joint.
Once we build that movement vocabulary, I’ll go to the piano and accompany it. The students can differentiate the sounds that represent each gesture. We’ll add a “swirl” and a “toss” to the palate. You can see the joy when we toss those scarves!