Dance for the Very Young: Movement, Play, and Relationship

MOVEMENT, PLAY, AND RELATIONSHIP

by Monica J. Cameron Frichtel

As a dance educator, my classes have included participants spanning decades − infants, children, adults, and seniors. It has been a privilege to engage creatively with all of them through dance. Within this broad spectrum of ages, I have found that there is a unique energy that the youngest dancers − infants, babies and toddlers − bring to class.

About seven years ago I had an opportunity to develop and teach a dance curriculum for this young cohort of students and their caregivers. Classes were offered in local libraries, a dance studio, and a multi-purpose community arts space. Recently, I have turned my attention to researching best practices in teaching children under age three and their adult caregivers.

My study is informed by dance education literature and by conversations with expert teachers and artists who shared insights from their years of practice. One of the main outcomes of the study is the conceptualization of dance for the very young in terms of three interconnecting and overlapping dance processes—movement, play, and relationship. have envisioned dance curriculum in similar ways. A more fully developed manuscript based on the study is set to be published by Palgrave MacMillan as a chapter in Dancing Across the Lifespan: Negotiating Age, Place, and Purpose, edited by Doug Risner, Pam Musil, and Karen Schupp.

Dance for the very young is a term borrowed from a theatre movement that began in London in the late 1970s, known as Theatre for the Very Young or TVY. TVY typically recognizes children under five and their adult caregivers as actively engaged audience members and participants. I envision dance for the very young in comparable ways, creating spaces for young children and their adult caregivers to move, create, play, connect, develop, and grow as members of communities. Understanding child development and how children come to know the world informs the choices dance educators make as they develop environments to support children and their caregivers.

MOVEMENT

Young children come to understand the world through movement. This is the first way children begin to make meaning, according to Lev Vygotsky, seminal 20th century psychologist focused on child development. Child-

caregiver dance creates unique opportunities to support continued understanding and development through exploration of movement in novel ways. Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen’s work has significantly expanded the field’s knowledge and practice of developmental movement patterns. This is particularly evident in my conversations with prominent dance practitioners and educators, who are invested in work with very young children.

Anne Green Gilbert of the Creative Dance Center in Seattle, created the BrainDance, a warm-up guided by “fundamental movement patterns that babies discover in the first year. ” Nancy Ng from Luna Dance Institute in Berkeley explores movement with babies and their mothers through a practice in which participants move through a series of “progressive developmental movements, ” such as laying on the floor and curling and stretching, lifting the head from a belly-down position, crawling, using the arms and a surface such as a wall to pull up to standing, and walking. In Vancouver, BC, Julie Lebel from Foolish Operations has a creative dance practice with very young dancers and their parents which begins with a warmup “informed by neuro-developmental movement patterns” that includes mirroring and movement. For all of these dance artists and educators, an understanding of child development guides their work.

In child-caregiver dance, the adult supports the child’s exploration of movement, while also exploring movement themselves. For infants and prewalkers, especially, but also for young and competent walkers and movers, the caregiver creates opportunities for the child to experience movement on different planes, varying levels, and in multiple directions. Adult dance partners create physical opportunities that would otherwise not be available to the children. A parent lifts a baby high into the air and gently turns. Both the child and caregiver experience the vestibular motion of spinning. A caregiver may hold the hands of a toddler as the child pulls away, experimenting with counterbalance.

Dance educators facilitate an environment where movement can be explored with minimal risk. Adult participants carry, hold, move, and respond to their very young dance partners. They have the opportunity to

evaluate, mitigate, and encourage risk while becoming aware of developmental skills.

PLAY

Creative play is central to dance experience for the very young. It offers opportunities to make choices and is characterized by exploration, discovery, and improvisation. The relationship between dance and play has been theorized by dance scholars such as Karen Bond and Sue Stinson, Jan Deans and Susan Wright, Carolien Hermans, and Nancy Ng. Through play, children learn and develop. Anne Green Gilbert describes dance for the very young as “free play and parent education. ” She says, “We teach [the parents] how to be on the floor and have interactive playtime. ” Similarly, Nancy Ng articulates the importance of educating caregivers by communicating the socio-emotional values of play and the importance to “mindfully craft dance activities that are play-based. ” Naming what is happening in the dance environment attunes participants to the experience, placing value on what may easily go unnoticed — the creative problem solving of maneuvering through an obstacle course or the improvisational movement relationship with a scarf. Props and games invite and guide play. I use balls, scarves, musical instruments such as shaker eggs and rhythm sticks, felt leaves and snowflakes, circles cut out of yoga mats, foam noodles, and large fabric sheets as some of the ‘toys’ of dance class. Playing with songs and rhythms, stopping and going, variations of peek-a-boo, and obstacle courses are foundational to the games that I use to structure dance class for the very young.

Yoga mat circles create markers that can be danced on or serve as islands where dancers find stillness. Toddlers can balance the circles on their heads, or use them as steering wheels for driving their ‘cars’ as they explore fast and slow. I use felt leaves and snowflakes in games of catching, collecting and falling. Scarves provide a myriad of options for hiding and discovering. Balls can be rolled, caught and held. Children and adults can sit, bounce and roll on balls of different sizes. Adults guide, support, balance and play with children as they experience movement with the balls. Play invites engagement in movement and relationship between the child and caregiver, and also among the childcaregiver dyads.

Child-caregiver dance classes create opportunities to reinforce relationships between children and parents and other caregivers. For the very young, secure relationships are essential to support development according to psychological and educational research. Dance offers relationship-building where caregivers dedicate focused time engaging with children. Positive experiences in dance may inspire and extend play, movement and relationship-building at home.

Dance for the very young creates opportunities to model and practice developmentally appropriate play and engagement, building competence and confidence in those caring for the very young. Nancy Ng describes curricular approaches of Luna Dance Institute’s Moving Parents and Children Together (MPACT) program. The curriculum offers opportunities for parents to learn about child development while simultaneously engaging their children. Motor and socio-emotional skill development is discussed. Parents physicalize stages of movement development, embodying an understanding of developmental movement and practicing being with their young children in intentional ways. Improvisational dances such as mirroring, call and response, moving with props, invite participants to relate to one another and the environment. Carolien Hermans theorizes this as relational play. Anne Gilbert describes caring dance as a practice of relating to one another. She recalls her teaching of parent-infant dance classes, “It’s parentinfant couples coming together...it's almost like a folk dance.

Adults may be invited to mirror the movements of their young dance partners. Often very young children organically begin mirroring their adult dance partners. Even babies will begin to mimic the simple movements of their caregivers—facial expression, hand clapping, and covering the eyes are commonly some of the first movements. Similarly, a call and response structure often begins with the same movements. The adult and toddler take turns stomping feet or using a scarf to hide and reveal their faces while exclaiming “boo!” This is often followed by many giggles. Importantly, such relational play establishes expectations of attending to others, taking turns and building relationships.

In my dance curriculum for very young children, every movement activity is an invitation to explore, play, and relate. Toddlers are free to dance with caregivers, alone, or with others.

Opportunities to move away from caregivers, explore independently, and return to trusted adults is fundamental to attachment theory’s understanding of a healthy and secure parent-child. In the child-caregiver relationships, the caregivers facilitate and participate in an environment where infants, toddlers, and young children are brought into a community—relating and engaging with others, while also fostering the more intimate child-caregiver relationship.

Movement, play, and relationship are interconnected themes that cannot be fully extracted from one another. Framing these themes separately provides an opportunity to consider the relationship of each to dance for the very young and in relation to the other two themes. For me, conceiving of dance for the very young in terms of movement, play, and relationship reminds me of the possibilities that dance can support and encourage human development in significant and meaningful ways.

Monica Cameron Frichtel is a dance educator interested in the experience of dance across the lifespan and especially for the very young. She is currently an Assistant Adjunct Professor at Temple University and can be reached at mfricht@temple.edu.

Bond, K.E., and Stinson, S.W. (2000/2001).

"I feel like I'm going to take off!": Young people's experiences of the superordinary in dance. Dance Research Journal, 32(2), 52-87.

Bond, K.E., and Stinson, S.W. (2007).

“It's work, work, work, work”: Young people's experiences of effort and engagement in dance. Research in Dance Education, 8(2), 155-183.

Bruner, J. (1967). Studies in cognitive growth: A collaboration at the Center for Cognitive Studies. New York: Harvard University.

Deans, J., and Wright, S. (2018). Dance-Play and drawing-telling as semiotic tools for young children's learning. London: Taylor and Francis.

Gilbert, A. G. (2006). Brain-compatible dance education. VA: National Dance Association.

Hermans, C. (2019). Becoming animal: Children’s physical play and dance improvisation as transformative activities that generate novel meanings. Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices 11(2), 157-175.

Kaplan, L. (1978). Oneness and separateness: From infant to individual. New York: Simon and Schuster

Ng, N. (2020). Dance play is serious business: Young minds require freedom. In Dance (Jan/Feb), 9. https://dancersgroup.org/2020/01/dance-play-isserious-business-young-minds-require-freedom.

Vygotsky, L. (2004). The function of signs in the development of higher mental processes. English edition: Rieber, R. (1999). (Trans: Hall, M.J.). In Rieber, R. and Robinson, D. (Eds.). The essential Vygotsky (pp. 539-550). Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers: New York. (Original work published 1982-1984).

Warburton, E., Reedy, P., and Ng, N. (2014). Engaging families in dance: An investigation of moving parents and children together. International Journal of Education and the Arts, 15(1), 1-26.

Nancy Ng, personal communication, October 25, 2020, November 24, 2020

Julie Lebel, personal communication, January 4, 2021