Dancing Rocks! 1.1

Now, we'll begin creating our rock dance,

and this first lesson focuses
on sedimentary rock and fossils.

Do you know anything about
sedimentary rock? Yes?

Discuss with the students

the different characteristics
and qualities they might see

in sediment and in sedimentary rock.

(instructor) That's the kind of rock

where we find that dinosaur bones
have been preserved,

and plants, and all sorts
of bugs and animals

are preserved in sedimentary rocks.

The dance begins with the students
creating a fossil pose.

Discuss with them the different things
that they might see as fossils--

plants or animals-- and how their body
might create the shapes

of those plants and animals in the rock.

Plant your feet on the floor,

and I want you to make
some kind of fossil shape.

So you could be a dinosaur bone.

You could be a grasshopper.

Your fossil pose can be any kind
of shape you want.

Give it a try.

Now we're going to take our fossil poses
and crumble them down to the floor,

and we're going to use that,
choosing four body parts to isolate.

One part's going to crumble.

Sedimentary rock.

All right, Julio, you try.
Sedimentary rock. (laughter)

Oh, his nose fell off, good.

Encourage the students
to be adventurous in their choices.

Ask them to try
using different body parts,

crumbling them in a variety of directions.

And the two things
I wanted to see in that activity

were that the students
could isolate a body part

but also that they could
move it rhythmically.

This is what's going to happen.

We have to do four sets of crumbling.

You have to pick four different
body parts to crumble,

and I want to be able to tell each time
which body part crumbles.

Here we go, ready, fossil pose.

5, 6, 5, 6, ready, go.

Sedimentary rock.

Sedimentary rock.

Sedimentary rock,
last one, get all the way down.

Sedimentary rock.

Awesome, that was so great.
Okay, stand up.

Now practice this section
of the dance with the music,

either in small groups
or as a whole class.

We're going to watch these guys
do their sedimentary rock,

and I want you to see
if they are very clear

what body part is crumbling

and also that it's crumbly, right?

That it's crumbling
and tumbling its way down.

Students should be able to both isolate
their crumbling body part

from the rest of their still pose

and accurately represent their sedimentary
rock rhythm in their body.

All right, hold still, here we go.

♪ (music) ♪

Sedimentary rock.

Sedimentary rock.

Sedimentary rock.

Sedimentary rock.

(instructor) Excellent.

Now that we've practiced this section
of the routine with the music,

take a moment with the students

to reflect on how they might make
their movements

more dynamic or more clear.

So what about the quality
of their movement?

Did it look...

Could you tell what body part
they were trying to use?

I think [Julio] was moving
his neck or his back.

Okay. Back is a good one.

That's a tricky one to crumble.

Julio, could you try that for me?

Stand up and make your pose.

And can you try crumbling your back?

What's interesting is that
when we start to build the dance,

you'll find that almost every movement

involves some elements of dance
if not many elements of dance.

We talked about moving from high to low.

We talked about the specific
energy of crumbling,

and we talked about our physical self
and our place in space.