Students Dancing for a Positive Start to 2022

admin 02/03/2022 Australian Dance News No Comment

Ausdance VIC has been chosen as a provider for the Victorian Government’s Positive Start program to be rolled out in public and low-fee non-government schools across the 2022 academic year.

Through re-engagement and connectedness, Positive Start will support students in their physical, social, and emotional recovery from the impacts of the COVID-19 lockdowns that disrupted the school year in 2020 and 2021.

Supercharged! is an imaginative romp in a playful universe of superheroes and superpowers. “Dance is a wonderful way to boost students’ physical and emotional health and wellbeing in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic,” says Dr Katrina Rank. Supercharged! was devised by Dr Rank and will employ expert teachers guaranteed to have students popping with excitement and enthusiasm throughout this creative hour-long workshop.

Ausdance VIC is excited to be included as a provider in the Positive Start program as the health benefits of dance are well recognized. At the same time, dance isn’t just about learning choreography and performing like a pro. It is fun, stimulating, energetic, and exploratory. Dancing helps students awaken their creative capacity as dance makers!

Supercharged! is based on the successful Ausdance VIC schools’ program, Blue Sky Dance, offering safe dance experiences, games, and creative activities to primary school students at levels 3-6, culminating in the co-creation of a short dance piece.

“Through games and activities, Supercharged! encourages participants to build characters and contexts,” says Dr Rank. Short choreographic tasks in the workshop will encourage students to explore relationships and physical capacity. “From everyday movements and the application of creative tools we co-create a world of physical and imaginative possibilities,” continues Dr Katrina Rank.

Through their participation in Supercharged!, students will experience a range of fun and stimulating dance activities, aligned to the Victorian school curriculum. They’ll discover that dancing is a fun activity involving creativity, experimentation, teamwork, and co-operation. “Students will soon realise that anyone can dance like nobody’s watching,” says Dr Katrina Rank.

The fun learning activities will help students to demonstrate the application of dance principles within a choreographed performance. Participants will take movement or ideas from everyday life and transform these into dance movement. They will manipulate these movements, using the elements of dance and choreographic devices. All done under the guidance of an experienced dance teacher using resources provided by Ausdance VIC.

Supercharged! will encourage students to explore the potential for their body to communicate and respond to specific ideas. After dancing and making dance, students will have a deeper understanding of the choreographic devices of accumulation, cannon, repetition, retrograde and contrast.

Dr Rank expressed her excitement about the program, “We look forward to reminding young people how good movement can feel and how empowering self-expression can be.”

Ausdance VIC has been funded to deliver Supercharged! to 75 schools across Victoria. Where possible, local dance teachers will be employed to deliver the program in schools, creating opportunities for future collaboration within these communities. School participation is cost-free and subsidised by the Department of Education and Training.

Interested schools are encouraged to act quickly to register their interest before the end of March.

Find out more about the Ausdance VIC Supercharged! via Arc: https://arc.educationapps.vic.gov.au/eventhub/providers/Ausdance/events/4497/details