Workshops, Curriculum-Tailored Study Guides and Hands-On Professional Development for Teachers
CCDT DancePlay Workshops The movement material in CCDT’s workshops, while very accessible and fun, is based on exactly the same principles and style practiced by CCDT dancers. The Company’s dancers or teaching interns assist these classes and lead participants through some of the choreography they will have seen in the performance. Elements of class content are drawn from Ontario’s dance and music curriculum requirements and all classes are enlivened by a pianist or percussionist.
The Company also offers workshops up to a master class level, for more advanced students of dance. These sessions are based on the technique of American dance pioneer José Limón and incorporate the teaching of choreographic excerpts from the Company’s extensive 80-dance repertoire.
Location: At your school – we come to you! (gymnasium or dance studio required)
Enrolment: Limit 35 students
Cost: $150 +HST per workshop, $250 +HST for 2 workshops, $300 +HST for 3 workshops (subject to minimum of 2 bookings per day),
Hands-on Training for Teachers of the new Dance Curriculum
DanceGuide is a professional development workshop series for dance teachers of Grades 1-8. While DanceGuide specifically addresses the needs of teachers charged with delivering Ontario's new dance curriculum, its systematic, progressive structure and material will benefit any teacher looking to inspire their students.
CCDT's primary objective has always been the careful initiation of children into the vibrant art of dance. This goal simply cannot be achieved without teachers who are passionately committed to the arts, schooled in its language, history and nuance and, most of all, deeply sensitive to the ways and means by which dance touches upon the lives of children. The DanceGuide Pilot Phase was generously supported by the Laidlaw Foundation.
a) Moving with Comfort and Confidence (1 hour)
The objective of this component is to foster within participants a feeling of self-confidence in their physicality and to demonstrate the ways in which movement is an integral and familiar part of daily life. This objective echoes both a basic Grade 1 curriculum requirement and dance theorist Rudolf Laban’s belief that dance grows out of the life of its time, reflecting ordinary motions such as work movements.
b) Talking the Talk/Walking the Walk (3 hours)
The first objective of this component is to communicate the basic elements of dance as they relate to the curriculum for Grades 1–8. The material is taught progressionally, following the progressional nature of the curriculum subject matter. Participants become familiar with the curriculum’s “big picture”, learning material pertinent to all eight grades, so that they may understand the relationship of their own grade material to the whole.
The second objective is to apply the elements and vocabulary of dance to the creative requirements found throughout the curriculum. Teachers learn to express themselves employing improvisation techniques and source materials from other subjects in the curriculum.
The third objective is to elaborate on the process of critical thinking, evaluation and communication that are key components of the curriculum.
The overall objective of DanceGuide is to provide teachers with a clear structure and method for organizing and delivering curriculum material.
Deborah Lundmark ranks among Canada's leading specialists in movement for the young with thirty years' experience as a dance instructor and choreographer. She was a faculty member of Ryerson Polytechnic University's Department of Dance from 1992 to 2000, specialising in teacher training.
Ms. Lundmark is the founder of the School of Canadian Children's Dance Theatre in Toronto, where she has trained the studio's second generation of teachers, some of whom began as children in her Creative Movement classes. She has developed and taught curriculum-related material over the past two decades and played a key role in the Toronto District Board of Education's Drama/Dance Project.
She is Artistic Director and Senior Outreach Teacher for the Canadian Children's Dance Theatre performing company. Touring with CCDT, Deborah has shared her expertise with teachers from Barrie to Beijing.
