Adding Deliberation to a Dance Course on Critical Writing
This blog series is written by faculty in a community dedicated to integrating deliberation into their coursework. I value the authors’ retrospective narratives on the whole semester of their deliberation redesign, including their initial intentions and assumptions, early failures, and what ultimately proved most impactful. I’m linking to one just piece in the series in this collection—not only does Kathleen Wessel exemplify the story-telling I find so helpful, I’m excited to highlight an example from the arts to bring home how instructors across the academy prepare our students to participate in a diverse democracy where folks will hold differing values, identities, and opinions.
Last spring, I took my Critical Writing for Dance students to see Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater perform at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta. They were tasked with writing a critical analysis of at least one of the works on the triple bill and all arrived with their notepads and pens in hand. After the first work, they sat in a row (dressed to the nines!) and scribbled out thoughts and first impressions as I had suggested. A nearby audience member, curious to see ten Spelman women furiously writing at the same time, asked what they were doing. One of my students answered, and the audience member responded: “Why? It’s not that deep.”
As the sole faculty member representing the arts in the 2023-24 Deliberative Pedagogy (DeeP) Collaborative cohort, I can attest: it is that deep. But both those who study dance and those who teach it in higher education often feel we must prove ourselves, and that burden can be exhausting. Identifying “wicked problems” and controversial topics to deliberate in a Peace and Conflict Studies or a Philosophy class seems like par for the course. Dance is trickier because it tends to be characterized in popular culture as either individual expression / catharsis or pure entertainment, neither of which – on the surface at least – affords much need for deliberation or critical analysis. And people can get defensive when scholarship, texts, research, and writing are introduced into sacred, emotionally charged movement spaces. Let’s not overthink it, I hear, dance is just about releasing and having fun.