Diane Louise Jordan has three sessions inspired by the climate and wildlife of Antarctica.
1. The coldest place on Earth. audio
Diane Louise Jordan has the first dance session in a unit set in Antartica full of snow and ice.
2. Icebergs and Emperors. audio
Diane Louise Jordan's dances today start with icebergs and move on to Emperor penguins.
3. Penguin parents. audio
Diane Louise Jordan's dances today focus in more detail on a colony of Emperor penguins.
Antarctica
An adventure to the bottom of the world - a land of icebergs and mountains, snow and ice. After twisting and turning in snowflake-shapes, the children stride and leap through deep snow, and forge their way through a blizzard. Smooth, cross-country skiing requires good left-right co-ordination, then co-operation when skiing in a line.
Iceberg-shapes are created with tall, stretching-up actions, then with smooth, wide-spreading ‘melting’ shapes. Slow, graceful floating and bobbing in the sea (in groups) leads to streamlined curving and twisting, for underwater swimming like seals. By contrast, ‘Emperor Penguins’ need straight backs and movements for swaying, leaning, scurrying, waddling and sliding, following each other in lines.
The penguins return in programme 3, ‘greeting’ each other in pairs, then rolling an egg to their partner. A penguin ‘colony’ shuffles slowly, to keep warm from a blizzard (in three circles) then, as light relief, a penguin chick takes comical, slip-sliding first steps. This final programme includes performance of an extended penguin dance sequence.
Resources
See also from KS1 Dance: Let's Move...
Winter wonderland. collection
A cold and frosty unit of four dance sessions exploring winter presented by Paul Panting.
Snow world. collection
Three dance sessions exploring winter and a snowy landscape.
Twas the Night before Christmas. collection
A two-part unit based on the famous poem 'Twas the Night before Christmas'.
