Teaching Methods: Visual & Performing Arts Essay

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Introduction

The National Standards for Arts Education developed by the Consortium of National Arts Education Association includes standards for the dance, music, theater, and visual arts. In compliance with the recommendations of Goals 2000, these standards include the study of culture and history, and all have implications for multicultural education in the arts. Through visual and performing arts, “students will develop an understanding of the personal and cultural forces that shape artistic communication and how the arts in turn shape the diverse cultures of past and present society” (Volk, 2004, p. 117).

Dance

Dance refers to any patterned, rhythmic movement in space and time. Some approaches to artistic activity, like the theory that holds it as essentially the creation of form, may not help in distinguishing parades from dances. This is because if we concede that dances must have form, it can be taken that parades and other activities like tree-sawing also have form. Form is necessary though not a sufficient condition of art; dances, unlike parades, must create forms that express emotion. Contrary to tree-sawing, dances must be undertaken for purely aesthetic as opposed to utilitarian purposes.

Music

Music is the universal language of emotions and is primarily something to which one listens; it is an art of audition. Basically, there is no culture that does not have music in some form or another. Music has patterns that can be constructed and developed in accordance with whatever conventional language the musician is using.

In a music class, the tutor should be able to demonstrate a basic fluency with the elements of music such as pitch, rhythm, and timbre as well as music concepts, including music notations. Styles and types of music should be explained as well as instruments from a variety of times, places and cultures (Bobrow and Fisher, 2009, p. 365). The idea that music could be taught through consideration of both its etic and emic is found in the literature of music education where it is referred to as the study of inherent (etic) and idiomatic (emic) musical concepts. The emic or interpretive way of studying music provides a way of understanding what music means to its creators and listeners.

Theater

The term theater customary refers to the performance aspects of a work, whereas the term drama is traditionally reserved for its narrative forms. The theatrical ordering of difference cannot be equated with strict polarities since theater is always performative but not necessarily narrative. Traditional Western theater offers two stages; comic and tragic. If theater reveals that objects exist only insofar as they are displaced by look, it also offers various reactive and interactive means of displacing and renewing the act of seeing. Theater provides a way of interrupting the frame from a point of view both within and outside it, much as the unconscious is the blind spot in our vision which in turn is constructed through and reflected by the look of the other.

Visual arts

In visual arts, the mode of representation is subjected to conventional codes of representation to which the recipient is expected to respond. Visual communication addresses a realm of consciousness which is less related to discursive logic than to deeper layers of emotion and expression situated in the pre-cortical limbal structure of the brain. Visual arts are infused into daily life through the mass media, malls and amusement parks, local sculpture gardens, the internet, fashion and furniture design and many more. Visual arts have become fundamental to the cultural transformation of political discourse, social interaction and cultural identity that characterizes the postmodern condition. This transformation is played out through broad cultural and interpersonal interactions in social environments and institutions, mainly the educational ones. Their immediacy, sensuality as well as memorability make the visual arts particularly powerful as a symbolic form and this power includes a didacticism that not only teaches us to want to decode their messages, but can cause us to learn even when the message is unclear. The visual arts make up most of visual culture, which is all that is humanly formed and sensed through vision or visualization and shapes the way we live our lives (Freedman, 2003, p. 2).

An education in the visual arts takes place in and through the realm of visual culture, inside as well as outside of schools, at all educational levels, through the objects, ideas, beliefs and practices that make up the totality of humanly conceived visual experience. It shapes our thinking about the world and leads us to create new knowledge through visual form. Art education helps to develop rich meanings through life experience inside and outside of school; it is found everywhere and interacts with daily human life. Informal art education happens throughout our lives as we encounter visual culture and have thoughtful discussions or debates about it.

Conclusion

When teaching dance, candidates should be able to identify the components and strands of dance education found in the visual and performing arts framework. They should be able to demonstrate a basic fluency with the elements of dance, such as time, levels as well as energy. While grounded in the elements of dance, they should be able to identify and explain styles of dance from a variety of times, places and cultures (Bobrow and Fisher, 2009, p. 365).

When it comes to theater, there should be a clear demonstration of a basic fluency in acting, directing, design as well as scriptwriting (plot and action). Styles of theater should be identified and explained from a variety of times, places and cultures (Bobrow and Fisher, 2009, p. 366).

With visual arts, there should be a clear demonstration of the basic fluency with the principles of art, such as balance, repetition, contrast, emphasis, and unity and should be able to explain how works of art are organized in terms of line, color, value, space, texture, shape and form (Bobrow and Fisher, 2009, p. 366).

Although the dance and music standards have the most direct impact on multicultural music education, due to the interrelated nature of the arts in various cultures, music educators should employ segments of the theater and visual arts. In all countries, multicultural music teacher education is of paramount importance. Moreover, for multiculturalism in music education to become a real part of the curriculum, there must be a change to a broader perspective in schools of music and departments of music education (Volk, 2004, p. 155).

References

  1. Bobrow, J. and Fisher, S. (2009). . NJ, John Wiley and Sons. Web.
  2. Freedman, K. (2003). . NY. Teachers College Press. Web.
  3. Volk, T. M. (2004). . New York, Oxford University Press. Web.
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