Dancing Through Life

Let’s do the time warp!

Pick an era in history that your kids are curious about, knowing that you’ll create a dance piece that explores your findings. From Ancient Greece to the Industrial Revolution to the Digital Age, as a class, research your chosen historical era. Investigate with prompts like: What was the world like back then? What problems were people facing and how were they trying to solve them? and How was society similar to or different from today?

Once you feel that you’ve gathered enough information, task your kids with physicalizing this era in history. You may prompt your class to think symbolically, creating movement based on how people at the time might have felt, or literally, looking at a historical photo and embodying what they see. Your kids may even want to look up videos that show how people walked, talked and dressed.

To culminate, use your movements to create a dance routine representative of the historic era you chose. For bonus points, perform your scene to another class or teacher and ask them to guess which era they thought it was and why!