Performing Arts in School: Aims and Values
To be able to tell a story through song, dance, and gesture- this is, we imagine, a very basic human attribute. Perhaps, in earlier societies more centred than our own, the definition, celebration and elaboration of the community's mythos through ritual performance was held to be very important; so important that there wasn't even a word for it- it was just what people did. In contemporary society, the fact that Performing Arts are taught in an artificial environment, out of context, is a clear indication of how far away we have come from our poemagogic roots: and the confusion over what should be taught, ably reflected by the National Curriculum guidelines for music, has less to do with cultural diversity than cultural poverty. For in a truly rich culture the arts are lived: they are not regarded as a menu from which one may pick and choose, and still less are they an optional extra.
And yet it is absurd to suggest that anything like a cultural vacuum exists in the lives of the children for whom our courses are intended. On the contrary, there is a kind of richness- for in eliminating the original performance arts modern society has replaced them with a range of substitutes so fully understood and lived that the primary task of arts teaching now is persuading children that anything else exists, let alone has value. For drama, originally legend and enactment, there is the television soap opera and the cult video; for music and dance, originally song and ritual ceremony, the disco. These can provide a way of life, an identity, even a language. But because they are tuned to a commercial, popular taste rather than the prompting of any deeply felt creativity, they can only satisfy a superficial hunger. Sweets rather than main course, they do not nourish- but children love sweets.
So the teacher of Performing Arts has to decide whether to go down the broad, well-trodden path of popular culture, like some kind of Pied Piper- with the children dancing to a tune they know already- or whether to strike out across difficult country, exhorting and cajoling, in the hope of discovering the original dance which everyone knew once, but has forgotten. Expressed like that, with a missionary zeal, it doesn't look like much of a choice, and it is only fair to say that many teachers believe that teaching should start "where the children are at", pursuing a high quality of performance within the popular forms. There is a lot to be said for this approach, particularly if the teacher isn't "at" anywhere much beyond the children except in executant skill.
The main argument against a popularist approach is that, like the culture it serves, it works against the children's creativity- especially in music. It is simply not possible to compose or perform decently in a popular style without a developed technique out of the reach of all but the most exceptional school age children. The National Curriculum, to its credit, stresses the importance of composition; but sidesteps the issue of how this is to be taught effectively. Much of what passes for composition in schools is really only arrangement or a lame half-baked pastiche; and the use of electronic keyboards to short-cut the compositional process may satisfy the requirements of the curriculum and lead to valuable progress in handling notation but in reality teaches little about developing an idiomatic compositional discourse. The only way to tap children's ability to compose in the true sense of the word is to simplify the musical language to a level where they are fully in control of all the parameters- and that takes it straight out of the popular style.
It may also take it out of their understanding: which is where dance and drama come in. For what is semantically incomprehensible as pure sound can take on meaning in a dramatic context. (This is why so much development in the classical language of music came out of opera.) By refusing to distinguish between music, dance, and drama as disciplines in the lower school I believe that children can be enabled to evolve an idiomatic expressive language in which they will be fluent, originating ideas rather than always being in the shadow of what adults have done better previously. Furthermore, the simplicity of that language allows a formal complexity: whether in pure music or in theatre work the creative and learning experience is deeper because it is always concerned with handling expressive archetypes rather than stylistic anecdotes.
The starting point, then, is a rigorous modernism; but I am not advocating the exclusion of other languages. Far from it: to do so would be to construct another ghetto alongside that of commercial popularism. The intention is to create perspective, to set a standard, to offer something constant against which the variables of style may be measured. It is also to establish those working practices which enable an informed approach to the classics.
Performing Arts teachers will naturally want the highest possible standards of work and achievement, and look for their own enthusiasm to be reflected in the development of those they teach. But while they enable and encourage students' creativity and commitment, perhaps in one or two cases each year even starting young people on the path of professional involvement with their subject, they need to bear in mind that for the vast majority of students the performing arts are a tool for personal development, and not the main focus of their activities. This is not to deny for a moment the importance of performing arts as a study in its own right: but its very effectiveness in fostering the development of the personality, in maintaining a healthy balance between the rational and the intuitive, and in enabling clear self expression serves to point out the need for staff to be aware of the growth of the whole person, and specifically of the relationship between what they do in Performing Arts lessons and what happens to them in the rest of the school and wider community. For although the content of performance courses could be expressed as acting style, dance technique, composing, singing and instrumental playing- with the writing of reviews- this would be a reductio ad absurdum. Clearly the full range of activities and experiences facing a student taking part in even a simple performance can constitute a fair curriculum in itself, involving personal and social development certainly, but probably also some technical problem-solving, design, reading, verbal reasoning, languages, and so on. Obviously within the consciousness of the student there is a constant cross-referencing of experience, knowledge and skills from one curriculum area to another. A Faculty of Performing Arts has a dynamic contribution to make to the process whereby the students gradually integrate and individuate their various experiences: not least because the origination, formation and presentation of an artwork is a model of that very process.