Fourteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

Although access to technology creates genuine benefits, for example making it easy to view dance works that are not otherwise accessible, the prevalence of technology in dancers’ daily lives creates complications that should be addressed in dance instruction. Examples follow. The deluge of information delivered through technology has weakened students’ ability to make human connections. The tunnel vision that is used for mobile devices is far different from the peripheral vision that is required to maintain lines and spatial patterns and gauge distances to be traveled. It is necessary to have daily reinforcement in class by continually rotating lines, changing fronts, and organizing groups of varied numbers traveling together. Budgetary restraints, when combined with inexpensive video technology, often force choreographers to limit their time in the studio with dancers. That has shifted responsibility to the dancers to see quickly to be able to reproduce and then manipulate the choreographer’s movement using reversals, retrogrades and direction changes. These practices can all be emphasized and practiced in class. Character limits imposed by Twitter, texts and similar technologies limit the user’s ability to explore almost any matter in depth. The arts provide a way to avoid these limitations, and in the dance studio students can learn to explore complexity and detail without interruption. One technique that I use with my pre- professional students is requiring them to maintain a weekly journal in which they take the time to consider and write out what they are learning and how that learning is affecting them.