Move Your Body

Forget what you think you know about Middle School dance. A recent visit to a 7th grade dance class with Felipe Oyarzun Moltedo highlighted a multitude of ways students engage, learn, and move in the performing arts facility even within a single class.

Felipe led students through warm-ups, an anatomy lesson (What is the location and function of the psoas muscle?), weight-transfer techniques and spins, head positioning, using momentum rather than muscling movements, the difference between an active and a supporting leg, new choreographed phrases incorporating movements from martial arts (tai chi, aikido) and ballet (plié in second), and the difference between hops and skips. For the record, GDS Hoppers can hop but grasshoppers actually skip as they locomote while airborne. 

The video below shows samples from the various ways students are learning about and moving their bodies for lifelong benefits well beyond the performing arts.