On Education - Rhee Gold
Gold, R 2003, 'ON Education', Dance Magazine, 77, 11, p. 59, International Bibliography of Theatre & Dance with Full Text, EBSCOhost, viewed 5 December 2012.
My 3rd literature review was very similar to the 1st review to the sense that it was an insight to different techniques used to keep boys and young male adults dancing. The difference being this was aimed more at extra curricular activities and independent dance schools rather than every day education. Rhee gold is a former male dancer himself and it’s very interesting to read an article from a male perspective and his techniques on bringing more boys to classes and schools.
A topic that seems to pop up the most is making sure boys are choreographed to dance like boys. Making extra sure that boys are not given feminine movements or costumes. This will only push boys away further and make them lose confidence with dancing.
For me, this doesn’t seem to be an issue that much. As my style of dance i teach is Street/ Hip Hop, the movements and costuming tend to be very masculine anyways and the little female movements that are involved are only given to my female students.
Rhee explains that being a male teacher/school owner will have it’s advantages towards bringing in more boys, Male teachers motivate younger male dancers. I’ve been lucky to be able to run my business with a female partner which has been extremely beneficial in ensuring that both male and female students are comfortable when signing up to classes. We have managed to ensure a good balance.
Including photos of boys in advertising is another method suggested by Rhee. Our main advertising and leaflets always feature both myself and my business partner in to show the balance of the male and female gender. As suggested in the first article i read, making sure that there are pictures of male dancers in your dance studio instead of the ballerinas and stereotypical pink walls. This is irrelevant for me at the moment as we only hire premies, however in the future we will plan to own a studio and this will be a priority.
A point that i have to disagree with is the idea of enhancing boys in choreography and not just placing them in a line executing the same movement as the girls. I can see to a degree why this might be beneficial for boys to give them more encouragement to dance, Although this might backfire towards female students who feel like all my energy and choreography is given only to male students. I feel there should be a healthy balance between the male and female dancers.
Taking boys to see a musical or dance company which features male dancers is something that i am putting in to practice at the moment.
“Boys who see other boys performing gain a confidence they might not have otherwise”
I’m currently teaching street dance to a large group of boys at an independent school. They all seem to be very passionate towards Street Dance and enthusiastic to learn more each week, in spite of that, i would also like to help prepare many of them for the future who have suggested the idea of dancing when they get older. To be able to do this, they will have to be able to learn more styles of dance including ballet and with this in mind i am currently organizing a trip with the head of dance at the school to take the boys to the theatre to watch “Ballet Boyz”
Again this has been another short article but full of interesting points. This has helped me develop new ideas for my research and what topics i need to look further into. One of the last lines of text of the article made me begin to question weather boys are discouraged from dancing because of their parents.
“Many boys have the desire to dance but are intimidated by negative stereotypes or discouraged by their parents, who can't get past the stereotypes themselves”
This is something that i haven’t seen to much of pop up in research so will be worth looking in to. Are the parents to blame?
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