IADMS Madrid 2001   [back to the Category]

Evaluating the dancer’s experience with the Feldenkrais® method   [read the french version]

Author :   Gail C. Grisetti, EdD, PT & al.

Evaluating the dancer’s experience with the Feldenkrais® method: The use of journaling

Gail C. Grisetti, EdD, PT, Deborah Thorpe, BA, MEd, Old Dominion University, Governor’s School for the Arts, Norfolk, VA, USA

The journal is a written record of experiences and reactions on a topic related to a discipline. Students create a special book where comments and reactions are recorded. Journals are reviewed by the instructor and become part of the method for evaluating the student’s growth in understanding of an area of study.
Journaling is a technique that has not been used extensively with dance students. Typically the student’s growth in ability is based on technical improvement or on a piece of choreography created during a semester. In an attempt to evaluate the experience of a group of dance students with the Feldenkrais Method® a journal was required as part of the course curriculum.
A group of twenty-three high school age students enrolled in an elite dance training program received seven weeks of classes in the Feldenkrais Method® during the Fall of 2000. Classes were given twice a week for an hour and 30 minutes per session. The curriculum included an historical look at the development of the Feldenkrais Method® and discussion of the differences and similarities in learning movement sequences in dance compared to the Feldenkrais Method®. In addition, students performed Awareness Through Movement® lessons at each session. The students had no experience with the Feldenkrais Method®.
Journals were submitted to the instructor twice, at mid-term and at the end of the semester. Quotations from the journals which chronicle the dance students’ impressions of the Feldenkrais Method® will be included in the poster as well as comments on the comparison of this method with dance technique. The poster will demonstrate how the use of journaling can add to a teacher’s ability to evaluate a student’s experience in learning a new movement technique.