Classes and Workshops
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Contemporary Dance / Fort Worth provides supplementary materials for teachers and students in conjunction with all educational programs:

  • Souvenir bookmarks for students featuring a quote about dance and creativity
  • A co-curricular study guide for teachers, suggests a variety of co-curricular classroom activities for a variety of academic disciplines.
  • Personalized certificates of achievement for students who successfully complete a creative movement residency.
CD/FW Dancers at Manual Jara elementary school.

Creative Movement Workshops


Co-curricular Movement Classes


Violence Prevention Initiative Classes


You're a Dancer Too


Bilingual Programs and Special Populations
 

CREATIVE MOVEMENT WORKSHOPS  
A series of creative movement classes can be offered in a special residency to work with a group of students over a period of two to six weeks. Residencies can be tailored to meet the specific needs of the school or organization. Topics in the past have included:

  • Addition and Subtraction (using body parts)
  • Multiplication (using rhythms, repetition, counting musical measures)
  • Telling Time (using the clock face and divisions of a circle/pie)
  • Fractions (divisions in time and space)
  • Speed/Tempo (how slowly or quickly we can move, and the infinite degrees of tempo in between -- includes exercises in "slow-motion replay" and "fast forward" the film)
  • Opposites (low/high, light/heavy, fast/slow)
  • Spatial awareness/Directions (right and left, facings in the room, mirroring, levels in space [low, middle, high], diagonals, stage directions)
  • Spelling/Vocabulary/Qualities -- (describing movement quality differences and learning the corresponding vocabulary/spelling words -- e.g. flitter, fly, float, soar, spin, shake, etc.)
  • Cooperation (group and partnering exercises where everyone must participate equally)
  • Visual design (symmetry/asymmetry, positive/negative space, spirals, diagonals)

CO-CURRICULAR MOVEMENT CLASSES  
A 45-minute co-curricular creative movement class can be designed using the study topics and lesson plans of individual teachers.

Example: kindergartners at Manuel Jara Elementary studying outer space had an opportunity to dance the planets' ellipses (working with patterns) and "travelled" via "our shuttle" - flying, swirling, and twirling - to the moon. "Dance-tronauts" learned about the terrain, temperature, and gravity differences.
VIOLENCE PREVENTION INITIATIVE CLASSES  
A 45-minute creative movement class designed to explore aspects of the revised Student Code of Conduct.   The lesson includes partnering exercises to establish trustworthiness, and responsibility and respect for others.  Group exercises require the entire class to collaborate and cooperate to achieve a unified goal.
YOU'RE A DANCER, TOO   
A 50-minute lecture-performance that introduces the concepts of modern dance movement and choreography, and basic terminology. The program emphasizes that we are all dancers and that movement and gesture are tools which we use to communicate every day to our friends, teachers, and families. Each program features interactive activities for students to practice cognitive and verbal skills which are required elements in the TAKS tests (e.g. sequencing). Students are selected from the audience to come up on stage to perform alongside CD/FW dancers. Everyone participates in a "dance-a-long" in their seats.

BILINGUAL PROGRAMS AND SPECIAL POPULATIONS
CD/FW is able to present English-Spanish bilingual programs and has initiated projects to present the works of Mexican dancers and choreographers.

CD/FW has presented programs and classes for special populations: hearing-impaired; physically disabled; learning disabled; emotionally disabled; at-risk students.