The Progressive Teacher Vol 04 Issue 03

creativity
–Preeti Sunderajan
Imagine a birthday party of a
three year old. There is lots
of colour, balloons, laughter,
music and movement. At one
such joyous occasion, Rhea’s
mother first noticed that her
child needed some additional
attention. While all children
jumped and rolled to music, Rhea
remained seated at the back with
her gaze downward. It was as if
she just wasn’t letting the music
move her. Rhea’s mother noticed
this pattern on several occasions
where Rhea preferred being in
the background, nearly invisible.
So she decided to enroll Rhea in
a creative movement class. The
objective of putting her in this
class was to increase her social
skills. Her parents thought that if
she interacted with other children
of her age she may get positively
influenced. After a few months of
classes, the impact and change
was very evident. Rhea was
now confident, outgoing, funloving
and social. She got very
comfortable with herself, made
friends easily and started dancing
in parties. This was thirteen years
ago. Today, Rhea is a classical
dancer, a basketball player and
enjoys creative writing.
There could be several reasons
why Rhea did not participate in
dancing activity at parties. This
could include lack of confidence,
limited movement vocabulary,
difficulty in body and movement
control, poor self-image, or
fear of being judged. Directly
Creative Movement
in Education
Body movement and performing arts as a medium of expression to groom
and teach children lessons for life
Movement sessions are ideal environments for learning in multiple ways.
It can help one understand the relationship of ones body with space and
time and make deeper connections by enhancing learning capacities.
or indirectly creative movement
deals with these attributes. The
fundamental principle is mindbody
connection.
Movement sessions are ideal
environments for learning in
multiple ways. It can help one
understand the relationship of
ones body with space and time
and make deeper connections by
enhancing learning capacities. By
adding aesthetics and meaning to
movement we make it a means
of self-expression thus bringing
about a mind body connect. The
medium of performing arts is
a wonderful form of expression
where the performer is able to
make connections between art,
culture/ life and society.
How do we use performing arts
to move beyond the scope of
mere entertainment then?
In order for us to make
connections between movement,
dance forms, learning and
expression, we have to
understand the process of
creation versus the end result
(which in the case of dance
will be a dance performance).
It becomes important to
understand and mediate a
process that bridges performing
arts and self development. The
essence of Indian performing
arts is the ability to tell stories
through your eyes, face, gestures
and body, the ability to multi
task with different body parts
and the ability to perform using
all this to complex rhythmic
patterns. All this leads to a
good performance but if we can
remove the technical side of
creative movement, we can see it
having a much larger impact on
the personality. A few questions
that come to my mind are: How
do we break this down? How
do we move from imitation to
innovation?
This can be broken down if
we give more importance
to the process of creation
versus the end result. While
creating a piece of art we
use skills like visualisation,
articulation of thoughts and
ideas, communication using the
body as a medium of expression,
creative thinking, presence of
mind, team work and most
importantly creativity. Allowing
the child to use the medium of
dance not to learn by rote but to
create something has a greater
impact on the personality. This I
found was the crux of Creative
Movement and its impact on the
child’s personality.
Some of the areas that Creative
Movement impacts are:
• Self Esteem: Helps develop
a positive self-concept in an
8 The Progressive Teacher Jul/Aug 2017