Maths and dance

Maths and dance can be closely linked in many ways. Often when you look at a subject a completely different way, a whole new level of learning is achieved.

You can link our dance workshops to Maths from the curriculum which is great for KS1 children especially. We show using our bodies clear representations of simple maths equations. We also get them used to the terminology used in maths classes, so this gets them feeling confident.

Zest teaches a lot of students per week in schools, so we thought it’d be interesting to break it down and look at the figures for a typical day of dance with Zest.

A day in numbers

So let’s think about the Flamenco dance workshops we did yesterday in a primary school in Essex.

• 1 bus, 1 train and a 15min walk to get the the school
• 1 Zest dance teacher dressed in a beautiful Flamenco dress
• 210 children in for an assembly at the start of the day
• 20minutes for the assembly about Spanish dance, it’s history, styles of Spanish dance, a short Flamenco dance demo
• 7 workshops in the day with each class – all years in the school
• 30 children in each class
• 30minutes for each workshop
• 5 Spanish songs used – one for the warm up, a few for the dance routines and one for the cool down
• 30 sets of castanets and fans used
• 1hr break for healthy lunch and to recharge the batteries
• 30min sharing performance at the end of the school day with KS2
• 90 children back in for the sharing, years 4, 5, and 6
• 210 children having tried a new dance style with a prop, and feeling proud that they performed in front of their friends
• 1 tired but happy dance teacher at the end of the school day
• 1 snooze from the dance teacher on the train back to London!

Phew, that’s a lot of numbers.