Shall we dance?...

Oh what a pleasure! Didn't I always dream about standing in a gym with many other more or less talented people learning how to dance? No, not really... Well, we tried our best to follow Lone's instructions on Wednesday morning to learn traditional dances, some kind of disco fox or whatever and a European tango version. For the limited talent most of us are featured with we did a pretty good job. Only the tango was a bit too much for me. But anyway, thanks a lot for the dance, Tim...

In the afternoon it was our turn to first create a dance and afterwards teach it to the others. We were divided into two groups: Manu, Charlotte and Iva made up a country style dance matching with Shania Twain's song "Up!". Tim, Kate and me created a dance for Ronan Hardiman's "Dance above the rainbow". Watch and enjoy it!

"You're so meeeeeaaaaaaan..."

Our music class on Wednesday started with lecture by Flemming Rasmussen about the influence of art and aesthetics on learning processes. It was a bit difficult for me to really get the point of the lecture. At the beginning I thought that he was of the opinion that aesthetics and pupils freedom to act, perform and produce art are more important than the actual learning (mathematics, vocabulary,...). It took some time and some more explanations for me to understand that aesthetics should only work as transport media for the content. Well, now I have an idea about that and I must say that it could possibly be a good way of teaching. On the other hand we already include games, role plays, presentations in our lessons which can - in my opinion - be seen as aesthetic learning. But maybe we should strengthen this part even more. I will have to think about it a bit more, but it's another idea/impression I will probably check out when I do my next practice in Germany.

In the second part of our lesson we presented the performances and posters we had made in connection with a piece of pipe music Else Marie had given us at the end of our meeting. We came up with three different stories and three different interpretations of the music. What they had in common was some kind of argument. Kate and Sylvie performed the argument of a wife and a husband. The husband had forgotten their ten year's anniversary and she was upset and crestfallen. Tim, Manu and Charlotte presented a princess (good job, Tim!) asking her father for permission to marry the prince of her heart, but he wanted her to marry the one he had chosen. Last but not least Iva and me performed our shopping scene of a couple. You can watch the movie if you like. In case that the dialogue is too fast or you don't understand everything look at Iva's blog, she has the text in written form.

After our presentations we repeated the songs we learned three weeks ago. Maybe we can teach some of them to the international students coming to Haderslev in week 11. Sing with me: "Hand and shoulders, knees and toes..."

The portrait of the artist...

On Wednesday it was art time. We met with Dorthe Rizzi in the art room and for warming up we had some coffee and tea. Then we went to business: We should produce drawings of each other in only two minutes (so we actually hadn't time to think about what we were doing). Most of the drawings didn't look like the persons pictured but we had some fun and lost at least a bit of our fears for the pen and paper. Afterwards we were told to draw ourselves, sitting in front of a mirror. This task wasn't designed to take more than five minutes but I somehow developed some kind of connection to my drawing that made me keep on drawing (quite strange situation since I hadn't drawn for years, but I just couldn't stop...). I was quite happy that Dorthe didn't have something to object about my wish to continue. Regrettably, I missed the other tasks that my classmates had to work on (painting on mirrors, printing,...) but the picture I produced made up for that. It doesn't really look like me completely but you can maybe find some similarities or at least attest to the fact that it shows a human person...

the clock and the pendulum...

Wednesday was all about using body and voice in many different ways. Topics were body language, voice, singing, acting, painting. I thought it was great fun making up little presentations in groups or painting the atmosphere of two music tracks. Regardless I'm not that much into dancing I liked our little dance performance and I had a great time singing songs and canons. And by the way, I think we did a brilliant job suggesting a very mysterious atmosphere like taken from an Edgar Allen Poe tale...