It was the novelty of leaving the house for the whole day that had me excited to get to a real life dance class. Packed lunch and breakfast bars ready from the night before - new uniform and a giddiness to get working in a creative space once more. Last week, I travelled to Luton to do 9 sessions of creative dance with Reception, Year 1 & Year 2 pupils. It was time. The wait was over.
Bee Dance Day had arrived!
Whilst I was setting up in the school hall, I had the joy of seeing the children’s work displayed which included a bee life cycle, bee inspired foods and a bee keeper outfit too.
The primary school had been working on a 3 day event in the theme of Buzzing about Bees! So Waggle Dance Co came to tie it all together with a dance workshop where we all learned the Waggle Dance. When bees communicate they dance! The waggle dance is a bee sat nav. So when a bee wants to tell the rest of the hive where to locate a food source, they perform a figure of 8 dance. The waggle run will be specific to the direction of the flower and the angle of the sun. I hope in the future to link this to SEN schools where young people with non-verbal communication can explore emotions through dance too. It is a great way to develop our self-awareness.
Storytelling and dance in education can be a positive reinforcement of our learning. By physcializing the story of the waggle dance and by learning through play we were able to understand better how important they are in our food chain. Over a third of the planets crops are pollinated by bees and so it is vital we start to look at ways to protect them and support them as much as we humanly can. Without them we would have a huge upset in our eco-system. Here BBC Earth spells it out to us. Let’s take action whilst there is still time.
I love teaching kids - they have the best energy and I felt they were very engaged in the dance, we were telling stories keeping active and using our imaginations to explore the world of the bee.
A nice way to end our session was to go into a mindfulness exercise I asked the dancers questions when we were all still and lying down.
“What colour is your flower?”
“Can you smell it?”
Some answers were very vivid
“Mine’s Purple and sparkly”
“Mine smells sweet like popcorn”
Overall I had the delight of working in a school with approximately 252 pupils over 9 sessions and Waggle Dance Co has had the first taste of what life can be like without the pandemic holding us back - we were buzzing!
Here’s what one of our wonderful teachers from Green Class said:
“Children enjoyed the waggle dance workshops, and explored the busy, energetic life of the bee, also including the important aspect of being a flower. Jess engaged the pupils immediately with an upbeat warm up and then moved on to the dance. The workshop had fantastic pace which kept the children focused on task. She also encouraged them to be free with their own movements during the independent 'waggle section'.
A pleasure to watch as a teacher.” Thank you so so much it really does mean the world.
See you on the dancefloor, Jess
