Art themed dance workshops

Art themed dance workshops really get our creative minds buzzing, with inspiration from so many artists.

We had a really fantastic day at Krishna Avanti School in Leicester who were studying Vincent Van Vogh and his works.

They had two year two classes and they wanted a dance workshop for each class, lasting an hour each. Then they would all come back together at the end to perform their dances to each other.

We love this kind of brief as we can get really creative with a dance style we love, which is Contemporary dance!

We had a long look at Van Gogh’s work to see which paintings would inspire us.. and it was a hard desicion with so many to choose between. In the end we chose these two – ‘Cafe terrace at night’ and ‘Starry night’

At the start of each dance workshop we showed each of the paintings to the students and we talked about the themes of the paintings, and how we could possibly make it into a dance piece.

Starry Night

For the Starry night dance we chose a twinkly piece of atmospheric music. We focused first on the town you can see in the foreground and we did some dance based on who would live in the houses, and imagining them getting dressed and coming out at night to look at the starry sky. Then we moved onto the swirly paint strokes in the picture and we did lots of circular moves and turns in the space and on the floor. It had a dreamy magical feel to the piece.

Cafe terrace at night

For the Terrace at night picture we used a French inspired accordion piece of music, which was upbeat and you can imagine it being played in a cafe.

We got the children in pairs, and one was a waiter, and one was a fussy customer at the cafe. It was more of a comical piece of dance exploring the relationship between the characters. We also added some movement you could imagine in a bustling cafe.

The children really took to all of the ideas, and they also came up with their moves and motifs to extend the dances. It was lovely when they all came back together to perform their dances to each other at the end. They were really excited to see the dances as they were both so different. We talked about what they could see in the dances and how they related to the paintings.

Feedback

We like to get the children to give positive feedback after they watch the performances. This really gets them thinking about what they are watching, and thinking of descriptive words to describe the dances. It also makes the children feel proud of what they have achieved in the workshops when people give great feedback.

A wonderful creative day was enjoyed by all.

Here’s another school who enjoyed one of our fab art themed dance workshops for their Arts Week, based on the sculptures of Barbara Hepworth.

If you are studying an artist/painting/sculpture and want to make it come alive, get in touch and we can discuss how.