Exploring Dance Forms and Styles (2010), Helene Scheff, Marty Sprague and Susan McGreevyNichols

Lesson  Plan

Grade Level: 9th-12th

This lesson plan helps students to recognize the class difference in the dance and how this can be demonstrate in non-verbal communication.

“The “Rainbow Repertory Etude”, and American Dance Legacy Repertory Etude is based on Donalds McKayle’s Rainbow ‘Round My Shoulder (1959). Rainbow was about the life of men on a prison chain gang. McKayle “focused on the degradation of human beings … the men in Rainbow find existence oppressive, and it is only through dreams … that they can escape. The modern dance classic is set to prison and blues songs” (McGhee and Sofras 2003, p.10).

…. For example, the formations and facings of the historical dances Branle, Farandole, and the Pavane clearly show the political change from dancing in a circle for and with other people of the same socioeconomic class to dancing facing a power higher than themselves, the king.

… In the United States in the 1920s, a clear connection existed between dance and upward social mobility. During this time, industrialization gave rise to an increase in the size of the middle class, more leisure time for the working class, a rise of the consumer mentality, population migration from rural to urban areas, and a larger and freer role for women in society.” (McGreevy-Nicholes, 2010, p.279).