What is creative movement?
Creative movement provides opportunities for children to create, express, and make meaning through their moving bodies. As with any creative medium, they might express ideas, thoughts, emotions, and many other things. The movement might be spontaneous (improvisational) or structured (choreographic), but it is always created by them. Teaching creative movement includes teaching children elements of dance to help them expand their creative range and guiding them through creative processes, including:
However, creative movement can be adapted according to its purpose and in some contexts can have a slightly different definition.
This difference usually comes down to whether creativity is a primary objective.
The Example of The Dancing Frog
Let’s take an example of “dancing like a frog”. If this is the stimulus for movement where creativity is a primary objective, it will include creative processes. For example:
A child might create alone or in collaboration with a partner(s). Collaborating provides many more creative possibilities! It also involves learning to cooperate, listen to one another, share ideas, and be patient and flexible.
Now let’s consider what the idea of “dancing like a frog” might look like if creativity is NOT a primary objective. This might be because the main goal is something other than creativity, e.g. a physically therapeutic goal. In this setting a child might be encouraged to harness their imagination to engage in movement that an adult has designed for them. For example:
Healthy physical development is the primary objective, including developing a child’s coordination, stability/balance, mobility, and sequencing of movement, especially their upper-lower body connectivity. Imagination serves a purpose to engage children in the activity. Other creative processes - experiment, invent, develop, etc - are not present because they do not serve the main goal.
Another example would be a dance school where the primary objective is to introduce children to a particular style of dance. In this setting, children might learn aspects of a dance form – steps, technique, musicality, etc - in imaginative, playful, age-appropriate ways. Jumping like a frog might serve to introduce children to a ballet sauté, where a dancer takes off from and lands on two feet. Becoming skilled in the steps and techniques of the dance form are the main objectives rather than creativity.
what’s your goal?
If you want to teach creative movement for children - maybe as a parent, teacher, or other professional - I invite you to consider your context and purpose. Is your context at home, in a school, dance school, physical therapy center, after-school club, children’s hospital, etc.? This will help you define your objectives. Consider questions like:
What is the purpose? What role will creative movement play?
how important are social-emotional, physical, creative, & cognitive goals?
in essence, what do I want children to gain or learn from engaging in creative movement?
When you have clarity on your goals, you will know whether you have the knowledge, skills, and experience needed to teach creative movement or would need training or additional resources. If you want to learn more, you can contact me!