2/18/2026 - Week 6 / Meeting 11: Assessment / Mid-Term Quiz
I
Unit: Assessment
Theme: Mid-Term Quiz
Introduction
Every
semester I assess your understanding of the content covered so far.
Just right before the progress report's dead line, you test your own
abilities to retain some of the themes we have learned and experienced
together. Today's quiz evaluates how efficient I have been in
communicating ideas about Improvisation based on your responses to the questions
below.
II
Objectives
- Understand the nature of self-assessment
- Make sense of the various concepts explored in class
- Gather an awareness of assessment that is conducive to further learning
- Experience what is like to put into practice the content learned in class
III
Discussion Questions
1. How do you think this class has (so far) helped you become a better dance-improvisation mover, dancer, performer?
Book: Taken by Surprise
2. Click on the link above. Go to the introduction on page xiii, and read the first two paragraphs. Briefly explain the main idea discussed.
3. Dances could tell a story. Good stories always have a plot. Explain the elements of a plot as they were used in class (beginning, middle and end) and find its equivalent with the part of a plot listed bellow.
- Exposition/introduction.
- Conflict
- Rising action.
- Climax/turning point.
- Falling action.
- Resolution/denouement.
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4. Read the article in the link above. About Simone Forti's art, Catherine Wood said:
Rather, she seems to have wished to observe animals in order to learn how to extend her own capacities. It’s as if she sought to incorporate other species’ forms of locomotion, “non-stylistically,” into a human repertoire of movement and into human experience—in the process suggesting a perceptual paradigm untethered from the upright human body and from the ostensibly anthropomorphic objects that mirror it.
How did you translate Forti's ideas into dance improvisation during class?
5. Shape is an aspect of the element of space. In class we did geometric shapes drawn in space and embodied shapes. In your own opinion, why is shape, as a concept, considered one of the strongest visual components in dance?
6. In class, we explored an array of emotions that informed our improvisational movements. How did dancing emotions help you expand your body expression?
7. During one of our meetings, we worked on selecting a theme, to then vary it by adding to it 8 counts to explore improvisational elements. Based on your experience in class, what is the relationship between a dance theme and variation?
8. What is the importance of art-making (in this case drawing) in the creation of dance improvisation?
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Link:
Dancing and Drawing by Auriea Harvey
9. After reading the article above, consider the following statement.
Auriea Harvey said:
"While I was not able to explore a structural representational style I would like to employ, due to reasons of time, I still feel what this exercise provided me with is a visceral approach to starting a drawing, a method for developing poses or even an entire choreographic outline for a model or performer whom I will draw. I think an applied theme or narrative would lead to an even more visually rich outcome." A. Harvey
a) Explain what Harvey means in the above citation.
10. Last class we mixed dances such as salsa, tango and polka. In which way do these dances contribute to your ability to improvise?
11. Group Work
Create a score for your group, choose a music piece to accompany it and dance to it using improvisational ideas.
11. Bonus
Unintentional Music: Releasing Your Deepest Creativity
Lane Arye
Introduction (First 3 pages)
https://www.google.com/books/edition/Unintentional_Music/U3coCgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Art,+Music+and+Dance+Improvisation&printsec=frontcover
Arye, Lane (2010). Unintentional Music: Releasing Your Deepest Creativity. Red Wheel Weiser
Explain what the author meant when using the term "unintended" dance?
QUIZ ANSWERS
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