Dancing Into Wide-Awakeness: A Tribute to the Maxine Greene High School for the Arts and Imaginative Inquiry Through Site-Specific Performance

• In Event: Response Abilities II: Generating Arts-Based Research With Martin Luther King Jr. and Maxine Greene at the Maxine Greene High School for the Arts and Imaginative Inquiry

Abstract

Dancing into wide-awakeness: A tribute to the Maxine Greene High School for the Arts, through site-specific performance
 
Theoretical Framework/Purpose
Maxine Greene (1995), an educational philosopher who advocated for incorporating the arts into the educational curriculum, believed that the arts held promise as a way of igniting students’ imaginations. She spent many years advocating that the high schools in New York City integrate the arts into learning. As a way to honor the life and work of Maxine Greene in our performance we will use dance/voice/movement and our collaborative creative process as a place of inquiry and opening to the way knowledge, insight and perception are steeped in embodied ways of being (Blumenfeld-Jones (1995); Anonymous 1 & Anonymous 2 (2003); Anonymous 2 (2012).

Methods/Inquiry
The space/forum outside of the high school will act as partner in our work. One way to understand this site-based performance is to not think of it as a stage, but a living, breathing partner where the textures of the earth, land, sea, flora have become a participant in creation (Anonymous 2, 2014). During this performance, it is our task to listen, observe, respond and be open to the changing moment, as the site provides its own interruptions whether it is rain, soundscape of birds or taxis, shadows from passing pedestrians or cars, or doors opening and closing.

Structure
We (three arts-based researchers) envision this site-specific performance happening in three parts: 1) We will begin on the steps and using the words of Maxine Greene and the sense of place, we will engage in a structured improvisation 2) Next, we will move to the Martin Luther King, Jr., sculpture and engage in a site-specific performance using the place, words, images and sounds to inform our dance; 3)Finally, we will summarize our performance with a questions and answer exploration that includes balls thrown and caught in the co-construction of a visceral immediate state, questions and answers and bodyshapes/poses will be struck in this call and response process. We believe that by throwing the balls to the participants it will strip away the excess in body and mind and bring forth an answer that really matters. This visceral astuteness brings the kind of “wide-awakeness” (1995) that Maxine Greene speaks of.

 References:

Blumenfeld-Jones, D. S. (1995). Dance as a mode of research representation. Qualitative Inquiry, 1(4), 391-401.

Anonymous 1 & Anonymous 2 (2003). Writing rhythm: Movement as method. Qualitative
Inquiry, 9(2), 237-253.

Greene, M. (1995). Releasing the imagination: Essays on education, the arts, and social change. San Francisco, CA: Jossey–Bass.

Anonymous 2 (2012). Dance as a way of knowing. Bodies of knowledge. New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, 134, pp. 53-60.

Anonymous 2 (2014). Dancing on the breath of limbs: Embodied inquiry as a place of opening. In A. Williamson, G. Batson, S. Whatley, & R. Weber (Eds.). Dance, somatics and spiritualities: Contemporary sacred narratives. Chicago, IL: Intellect, University of Chicago Press.

Authors

• Mary Beth Cancienne, James Madison University

• Celeste Snowber, Simon Fraser University

• Kathryn Ann Ricketts, University of Regina