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Making movement scores | Lines Crossing, (phase two)
2009-05-07

Making movement scores

Week 4, St Edwards NS This week we reviewed all the work on the project so far, including all the work the children had done with Cathal. We looked at the links and progression form one part of the work another, for example how the chimes sound tracks they made with Cathal had been our starting point for the sound drawings. It seemed now was a good time to assess our direction. The shapes in the sound paintings already to suggested movement in so many ways I felt a movement score could easily be drawn out of each sound painting. It was an obvious progression for me, as a way of deepening the experiences in the painting work and that would also bring us back closer again to the work at the start of the project with Cathal. Sound art had linked into the visual art, that would now link in to the next new phase, performance and movement work. the children happily pointed out the connections and were in no way phased by this new direction. I pointed out how a movement score would work in a similar way as the train maps, which they had used as sound scores with Cathal. The Task: Each child isolated three of the clearest shapes from there paintings and drew them at the top of a clean sheet of paper. I used questions then to get them to write about those shapes as a list below each shape. They described the shape, then it`s qualities,(smooth, jagged etc). They described how they would make that shape with their bodies, what parts of the body they would use, what height they would do it at, if the shape was static or moved, if it was slow or fast, if it moved up/down, in/out etc. They then drew out their movement scores on a new sheet of paper, giving the shapes an order across the page and writing the words in and around the shapes as they travelled across the page. They used different colours for each shape and found ways to make each shape join onto the next.

After the break I asked the class what they thought we should do next now that we had made these beautiful scores. `We should move them!` was the response. So we took the scores to the `green area` and each child developed a short sequence with their three shapes and they performed them to each other. Just as we had with the paintings we helped each other make shapes clearer or bolder where they still seemed uncertain and we took time to build confidence and clarity in the work so that everyone had a clear sequence by the end.