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Teaching artist Sara Lavan shows students the different ways it’s possible to swing their bodies, and then demonstrates a short, eight-count modern dance. 

Vocabulary You Will Learn:

• Modern Dance—A style of dance that began in the late 19th century as a reaction to ballet, when dancers wanted a style of dance that allowed for more freedom of expression. 

Materials You Will Need:

• Nothing—just yourself!

How to Create Your Own Modern Dance

1. First, you’ll experiment with some of the different ways that you can swing your body. Practice swinging both arms, one arm, your legs, your hips, your head, and anything else you can think of!
2. Now it’s time to learn a modern dance. First, hold both arms straight out in front of you, and swing your right arm back behind you, and then return it to the same position it started in. Do the same movement but with your left arm. Now do each arm twice in a right, left, right, left pattern. This will be the first move of the dance. If it helps you to do an eight-count out loud while you do this (the way Sara does in the video), go ahead; you should complete two 8-counts while doing this move. 
3. For the second move, hold both arms up overhead, and then swing one arm down in front of your body and back up. Try the same move with the other arm. Now, as with the first move, swing each arm twice in a right, left, right, left pattern. Again, you can count to eight while doing the move if it is helpful.

4. Next, you’ll learn the third move. With your arms hanging down at your sides, swing them first to one side, then to the other, then swing them overhead in a full circle. At the same time, you will lean to one side, then to the other, then do a traveling step (where you take a step to one side with one foot and follow it with the other foot). Then, repeat this move a second time. Again, you’ll do this to two 8-counts, which you can speak aloud if you’d like.
5. Finally, it’s time to put all the moves together! If you’d like an eight-count rhythm to do the dance to, scroll to around 4:30 in the video. Starting with the first move, dance the three moves you learned in order, making sure to perform each move twice before moving to the next. 

In this video, Sara shows us different ways to swing our bodies, and then teaches us a short modern dance that uses several of these swinging movements. If you want to go even further, think about these questions: 

• At the end of the video, Sara encourages us to think of other ways we can swing our bodies. What other ways can you swing your body that wasn’t used in this dance sequence? Can you swing your head, or your hips, or your hands?
• Can you use these different ways of swinging your body to add a move onto the dance we created—or even to create your own original short sequence of dance moves? 
• Try playing a few different kinds of music while you work on creating dance moves by swinging your body. How does your movement change when you listen to hip hop, versus a slow ballad, versus an upbeat pop song?
• At the beginning of the video, Sara talks about how dancers created modern dance in order to have more freedom of expression. Do you feel like this type of dance allows you to express yourself freely? What other kinds of art do you use to express yourself?

Accessibility

Don’t forget that you can turn on “Closed Captioning” to view the YouTube video with English captions.

More about the Teaching Artists

Sara Lavan (she/her) is the founder and co-artistic director of Local Motion Project, a dance organization in Alexandria, Virginia. She is passionate about teaching dance and somatic approaches to movement, as well as bringing a variety of collective movement experiences to her community.

Kennedy Center Education Digital Learning

Eric Friedman 
Director, Digital Learning

Kenny Neal 
Manager, Digital Education Resources

Tiffany A. Bryant 
Manager, Operations and Audience Engagement

JoDee Scissors 
Content Specialist, Digital Learning

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Gifts and grants to educational programs at the Kennedy Center are provided by The Paul M. Angell Family Foundation; Bank of America; Capital One; The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation; Carnegie Corporation of New York; The Ednah Root Foundation; Harman Family Foundation; William R. Kenan, Jr. Charitable Trust; the Kimsey Endowment; The Kiplinger Foundation; Laird Norton Family Foundation; Lois and Richard England Family Foundation; Dr. Gary Mather and Ms. Christina Co Mather; The Markow Totevy Foundation; Dr. Gerald and Paula McNichols Foundation; The Morningstar Foundation; Myra and Leura Younker Endowment Fund; The Irene Pollin Audience Development and Community Engagement Initiatives;

Prince Charitable Trusts; Dr. Deborah Rose and Dr. Jan A. J. Stolwijk; Rosemary Kennedy Education Fund; The Embassy of the United Arab Emirates; The Victory Foundation; The Volgenau Foundation; Volkswagen Group of America; Jackie Washington; GRoW @ Annenberg and Gregory Annenberg Weingarten and Family; Wells Fargo; and generous contributors to the Abe Fortas Memorial Fund and by a major gift to the fund from the late Carolyn E. Agger, widow of Abe Fortas. Additional support is provided by the National Committee for the Performing Arts..

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