I have always had a love of working with Primary School Children and Dance. As can be seen from these images, taken by me, the joy of movement is profound and the physical freedom elicited by the children while doing my work is wonderful.
Working with Primary School children with a Creative Movement focus brings about a range of outcomes. Firstly, the children make all the work, bringing authorship and ownership to their dance. In doing so they explore a range of gross motor actions with their limbs, impacting on working memory, co-ordination and their sense of self.
The confidence that develops alongside this emerging complexity of co-ordination is incredible to watch, alongside the evolving understanding of their creativity, their developing awareness of the impact of working in partnerships to create duets and trios, and the way they grow as they show their work to each other.
My hypothesis, after many years of research on movement, developmental neurophysiology, learning and cognition is that the impact of my primary dance programme on young people is such that, when they have finished my session, they have a 20-30% increase in their learning capacity for the subsequent hour or two in the classroom. This has been anecdotally verified by teachers working with me in multiple schools, where the focus and capacity for learning after my dance session is a profound experience for both the pupils and the teacher. I hope to be able to validate this hypothesis in the future.