Dancing Unflattening

• In Event: 35.047 - Unpacking Unflattening: Interdisciplinary and Multimodal Inquiry in Teaching and Research

Abstract

Since 2008 I have taught an introduction to Interdisciplinary Studies (INDS) at ____ and have searched for published works that provided rich illustrations of interdisciplinary work. When Nick Sousanis’ book Unflattening was published in 2015, I knew that it would form the backbone of my INDS ___ Ways of Knowing course. But my greatest challenge was how to “teach” Unflattening. Asking students to respond in essay form with a writing prompt seemed to be exactly the sort of “assessment” that Sousanis was critiquing in Unflattening. So I drew upon my own experience as a graduate student in Arts in Education at Harvard, where Professor Jessica Hoffmann Davis asked us to respond to essays on arts education with an art form of our choice and a short reflection on the connections we made between assigned reading and our response.
In INDS ___ I invited the class to respond to one of the Unflattening chapters  in an art form (primarily) rather than the usual weekly essay. The prompt for student responses was,
Have you experienced the “flatness” that Sousanis describes in Chapter 1? If so, where (for example, in a school setting or another institution)? Describe any connections you see between Sousanis and the Ken Robinson RSA presentation we viewed in class. Include key quotes. How do the images of Perseus and the winged sandals symbolize freedom from “flatness”? (INDS ___ Fall 2017)
INDS student A, who has studied and performed dance for the past sixteen years, chose to choreograph a dance in response to the book Unflattening (2015) by Nick Sousanis, and the class was intrigued – but most importantly, they understood the message A was trying to convey about conformity. You can view the video entitled “Unflattening: Flatness” here.
In her essay that accompanied the video, A noted,
The dancer on stage right [is] leaving the “group” to develop her own sense of individuality. Movement inspired by “darting, dancing, animated and teeming with possibilities- has now become shuttered…the potential energy in this dynamic creature curtailed” (p.18-19) and “Now finds itself confined, boxed into bubbles of its own making” p.14.
As a result of the positive responses she received from classmates and mentors, A was inspired to explore women’s issues such as sexual assault through dance, and to reach out to other choreographers who are tackling social issues. A applied for (and won) a grant to travel to New York to study with professional dancer and choreographer Sarah Panayiotou, Founder and Artistic Director of BABEL Movement.
We hope as educators that the experiences we share in the classroom will resonate with students and help them to find their way as scholars, citizens, and artists. A’s story serves as an inspiring example of one student who has been able to find that “... place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet,”as Frederick Buechner described it (1973).






Author

• Steven McAlpine