Dance Feeds the Brain

Of all that distinguishes Glen Urquhart School, the dance program may be the least understood by outsiders. To Glen Urquhart’s founder, to the teacher who directed the program for more than three decades, and to the current GUS dance instructor, however, dance is anything but a whimsical diversion or meaningless pursuit. To them, and to the hundreds of students who have jumped and turned and leapt throughout their years at GUS, dance is an important component of learning that offers a valuable boost to creative thought and problem solving.

Lynne Warren, the school’s founder, built dance and movement into the curriculum for all grades and for all students from the very beginning. “Introducing students to the art, history, and beauty of dance, and the physical requirements of creative movement are a priority for implementing the school’s philosophy of educating the whole child,” she explains. “Education consultants recognize the importance of movement such as marching and skipping, as well as other bilateral operations on ‘brain patterning’ and, in turn, their effect on learning and cognition. Thus, both a group of eighth graders creating a jazz dance and a class of kindergartners portraying animals moving in a woodland setting enable students to develop important skills.” As Mrs. Warren

notes, her ideas were corroborated by extensive academic research, including the groundbreaking work of Harvard neuropsychologist Howard Gardner on multiple intelligences.

Donna Krohn came to GUS in its infancy and stayed for 33 years as the school’s dance instructor. Trained in the Laban method in England, she always taught some technique to students but focused on drawing out their creativity, coaching them to put ideas into movement, and encouraging them to feel comfortable in their own bodies. “I put on different music every week and had them improvise to different styles of music and different moods of music,” she explains. “We used lots of drama. We would make up stories to act out. They would pretend to be walking through peanut butter or through a very narrow space. They would have to move in different ways, alone or with partners.” Some students might be particularly talented, but all could work at their own pace, at their own level of comfort. This, she says, allowed them to become more adventurous as time went on.

“We were not trying to make dancers,” Krohn emphasizes. “The reason it was and is important to have dance in the curriculum is that, in any kind of situation, you need to learn how to develop ideas and think outside the box. You do that in

dance — improvise, be creative, develop an idea — and you can transfer that to other disciplines. Any kind of business you go into, one can have the confidence to solve a problem if you have had the experience and practice of taking an idea and developing it and solving it.” Merelyn Smith, director of the math program at GUS for many years, also saw dance as a way to have students with different learning styles gain a better understanding of concepts of rhythm and

counting developed in the dance studio, according to Krohn.

“GUS is one of the few schools that realizes how important movement and dance are,” Krohn concludes. “Other schools might have dance at the end of the day as an elective. GUS recognizes how important moving is for kids, how tied it is to developing creativity, and that dance, as Gardner expressed, incorporates all learning styles.”

Ann Marie Ciaraldi is the current dance teacher at GUS, arriving just last fall. A working dancer, she recently became a certified Qoya teacher, “a movement system based on the idea that through movement we remember as women that our essence is wise, wild and free,” according to Ciaraldi. She enjoys teaching the Humphrey- Limon technique which is organic in nature and based on the concept of fall and recovery. Her early training was in classical ballet, in her home state of Connecticut and at Butler University in Indiana, as well as with other teachers in the Boston area. She then became a modern dancer, performing original works by Doris Humphrey, an icon in the world of modern dance, for several years with Ina Hahn, artistic director of Windhover in Rockport. She also performed with the Ipswich Moving Company and the Boston Liturgical Ensemble.

“I feel that dance is for everyone. It is an emotional and physical outlet that expands the heart, mind, and body.” Because the students are at different levels and with different interests, Ciaraldi does not consider her courses to be classes in technique, though she does teach about balance, weight change, musicality, and tempo. “I would call my program educational modern dance,” she explains.

Expanding on her belief that dance is for all, Ciaraldi says, “I believe that everyone is a dancer. Our ancestors danced around a fire. In a society that is so cerebral, we need to get into our body to experience our wholeness” Ahhh. There is that ‘whole body’ notion again.

For Ciaraldi, performance is an important piece of the dance program, but perhaps not for the reasons that come to mind when we envision ballet recitals and tutus. “Performance is an unselfish act,” she believes. “It is giving to your audiences. You have to think about what you are offering through your dance. Performance is sometimes thought about in terms of ego, but you can tell when a dancer is selfishly or authentically performing. The energy of giving comes out. You are communicating something that is very powerful.”

Ciaraldi’s focus changes with the grades she is teaching. In kindergarten and first

grade, “I want them to learn they are movers; to feel free with their movement; to keep their vulnerability which is so special before the self-consciousness comes in. I want dance to give them a sense of themselves.”

In grades 2, 3, and 4, the concepts are more intricate. There are choreography projects. For instance, her students this year took postcards from the Museum of Fine Arts and created movement and stories from them. They did the same with poems. With both, the movement came first, the music second. “I keep building the same concepts, with more intricacy in the higher grades,” Ciaraldi explains.

In fifth and sixth grades, Ciaraldi adds more technique in their classes and “we expand the choreographic process and projects even further,” she explains. While seventh graders take a hiatus from dance to focus on drama, they return in eighth grade with increased maturity and focus.

The eighth graders’ work culminates with Arts Night for which students choreograph their own dance in groups. In addition, this year, they performed a full class piece choreographed by Ciaraldi and based on the question, What does it mean to be human? The other eighth grade dance activity is the musical, which involves some reluctant participants each year. Ciaraldi aims to have them “get something out of it even if they don’t want to do it,” she says with a smile.

Ciaraldi is full of ideas for the future. “I would love to see the dance program expand,” she says. She offered an afterschool ballet class this spring and plans to offer more after-school opportunities. She would like students to have more performance opportunities; to bring more performances and workshops on campus; and to attend more training workshops herself, like the one she will go to this summer in New York City.

In the meantime, Ciaraldi is happy to be at GUS. She loves the community and being around the kids. “The faculty and staff have been absolutely amazing,” she says. “GUS is a unique and special community where the faculty and staff work together to have an exchange of gifts. The faculty and staff really care immensely about the kids, and they are always looking to find a better way. The world is changing. Here they are making an environment where kids can grow with it. The biggest skill a child can learn is how to adapt to their environment.”

Ciaraldi is the mother of two daughters, Mary 14, who will be a freshman at Beverly High School in the fall, and Maggie, 11, who will enter sixth grade at GUS.