Plunged into dance. Creating choreographic-pedagogic propositions as a collaborative learning community in primary school.

Abstract

With this practice-based study we inquire into choreographic-pedagogic intertwinements (Østern, 2018) as a cooperative learning community between a choreographer-researcher-teacher and four primary school teachers. We have co-created the article from our experiences with a creative dance project with the third graders in a public primary school in Norway. Through exploring four stop-moments (Fels & Belliveau, 2008) we tap into an artistic and textual diffractive analysis (Bozalek & Zembylas, 2017; Lenz Taguchi, 2012). The study is created through the expanded notion of choreography (Foster, 2010; Klien & Valk, 2007; Lepecki, 2006) and carried out as a performative research (Østern et al., 2021) situated in the theoretical landscape of agential realism (Barad, 2007). With this study we challenge the gap between art and school, and the professional practices of teachers and artists (Hall, Thomson & Russell, 2007), the professional competencies and differences of the artist and of the teacher (Christophersen, 2013b) becoming performative in the dance project.