Teaching with Sync Objects
As a choreographer and dance educator (specializing in technologies for dance), I’m working on ways that Synchronous Objects can now come back into the dance studio. During our prototype phase in January 2009, I conducted a workshop in the dance department for 25 students with guest artist Nik Haffner (formerly of the Ballet Frankfurt). Nik and I are interested in working on connections between Bill’s previous project, Improvisation Technologies and Synchronous Objects. Where Improv Tech focuses on one body and the movement generation stage in the choreographic process, Sync Objects focuses on group structures and the process of connecting and crafting relationships between sequences of motion. We think they are a nice compliment to each other. We’ll also have a couple of classes this spring at Ohio State in architecture and in dance focusing on the project as a research resource and a model for thinking about relationships between theory and practice. We’ll share some of the results of those courses on the blog. I’m very interested to know if other educators find our objects useful in their teaching and would be delighted to see an exchange unfold on this subject.
—Norah Zuniga Shaw
[...] have also posted an interesting blog post about using this as a teaching tool. Which is a big part of what I think is so interesting about it. So many people look at modern [...]
I can see a multitude of ways to use this material in teaching: I am going to use it in my classes: Aesthetics and Criticism, Choreography, and Improve. To use it in conjunction with the Improvisational Technologies is a natural fit: a micro/macro view of compositional/improvisational possibilities and a context in which to view/analyze them.