Week Seven

4/11/2019

This week we revisited the key elements of Orff Schulwerk as we learned a 12-16th century court dance called a Clog Bronie. Belinda taught us the dance initially through having us imitate hand actions. She nodded her head to indicate a beat as she taught these actions, which allowed us to better understand the timing of them, and then more easily transfer the hand actions to our feet, which became the foundation of the dance once we added the music. Through this process we also revised the use of repetition and chunking, and incorporated compositional activities by creating our own dances in smaller groups. Furthermore, we used the dance to highlight and understand the structure of the piece, similarly to the activity we did with The First Circle last week, which further affirmed in my mind the ability for Orff teaching to help students understand more complex musical concepts.