Embodied Writing Practices Utilizing Inclusive Language Strategies

Workshop Presentation
Jennifer Salk,  Stephanie Liapis  

As part of our strategic initiative for equity and inclusion we teach critical thinking strategies and practical movement exercises that bridge cultural backgrounds. For years dance educators have used Laban Movement Analysis (LMA) as a systematic framework for teaching students how to view, talk and write about dance. Utilizing a language that has cultural assumptions attached to it, potentially excludes valuable lenses. Unless students are guided away from that framework to find their own voices, the writing is often unoriginal. We seek to disrupt the Eurocentric bias through a series of writing, moving and speaking exercises that encourage individual expressivity. With our strategies, students develop a rich and authentic language through the use of embodied writing practices. For example, in this workshop participants will generate personal gestural material in a movement accumulation process, improvise while simultaneously describing it in vivid detail, free write to build descriptive paragraphs in pairs and practice writing a close analysis of professional work. We guide students from myriad backgrounds and levels of exposure to dance, to move, write and converse from a place of personal, embodied knowledge. Participants will leave this workshop with tools and practical exercises for their classrooms that help students see what is before them and discover their own vivid language, including various writing assignments and conversation prompts that are evocative and personal, articulate and sophisticated.