Nevide akpinar dellal matthias gleitze katarzyna wado

DANCE AS AN EDUCATIONAL TOOL FOR TEACHING ABOUT THE HOLOCAUST IN ISRAEL

Diana SCHUEMANN, University of Haifa, [e-mail]

Dr. Arie KIZEL, University of Haifa, [e-mail]

Dr. Henia ROTTENBERG, Western Galilee College and Kibbutzim College of Education, [e-mail]

ABSTRACT

The Holocaust has been depicted in various forms of contemporary and modern art from different narratives of the survivors, the survivors’ children, to the following generations. Visual and performative art can offer a way to express, to deal with something, to reflect, to protest or to resist. Our lecture will present a research which discusses the use of dance for teaching about the Holocaust in Jewish-Israeli high schools education led by students, teachers and choreographers understandings exploring dance as an educational tool for teaching about the Holocaust in Israeli high schools. This research aims was to explore students´, teachers´ and choreographers´ current understandings of Holocaust Education and to discuss dance as a tool for teaching about the Holocaust. The methodology is a qualitative empirical approach. Semi-structured narrative interviews were conducted with 15 participants, comprised of five Israeli students, five teachers in Israeli high schools, and five choreographers from the international field. The findings show the students’, teachers’ and choreographers’ have individual approaches, understandings and perceptions concerning the Holocaust topic. In addition, dance is widespread included in recent Holocaust Education in Israeli high schools. Dance is used as an optional class in order to express and to deal with ones feelings on the topic. Dance offers to include universal messages in Holocaust Studies. The interviewed student posit the feeling of being political socialized and wish political messages would get left out of Holocaust Studies, so they could focus on their own individual understanding on the topic rather than studying the topic from the perspectives of constructing stronger Jewish Identities.

Keywords: Holocaust Teaching, Dance, Israel Educational System

ALBERT SPEER’S CATHEDRAL OF LIGHT: THE POLITICO-RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE OF NATIONAL SOCIALIST PERFORMANCE ART

Graduate Student Jeremy SCHRUPP, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, [e-mail]

ABSTRACT

This project analyzes the indoctrinating, transcendental, and bodily transforming effect of Nazi aesthetic performance. Speer’s Cathedral of Light made manifest, virtually, Adolf Hitler’s monumental architectural vision for his “thousand-year Reich”. This moment of ideological propaganda reframed, is not only a performance, but also, an act of performativity on an extraordinarily grand scale. Attention has been allocated to the virtual spectacle in its entirety, yet little is given to the individual spectator/participant. First-hand accounts are explored to glean a sense of the very visceral experience of what it meant to be a part of this event. Questions are broached concerning the efficacy of propagandist performance art in the violation of individual cognitive liberty and its relationship to human rights. Additionally, a Butlerian style performance theory approach is taken to gain a better insight into the bolstering and otherworldly effect of the Cathedral of Light on Nazi era German individual and social identity construction. The politico-religious atmosphere generated a personally tactile and social phenomenon that successively prompted an interior experience nearing the sublime. The intent is to explore the reality of what it meant to be a “German” in the Nazi era. It is not the physical identity that will be analyzed, but rather, the actual “nature of being”, the performativity within the unconscious assimilation of virtual Aryanism that was so instilled within the spectators/performers of this event. This work provides an additional epistemic layer, helping to further bridge the gap in our understanding of what happens in the space between compliance and cognitive manipulation.

Keywords: performance art, performance theory, Nazi propaganda, cognitive liberty, human rights

“MUSIC IS WAITING FOR YOU:” THE LIVED EXPERIENCE OF CHILDREN’S MUSICAL IDENTITY

Prof. Dr. Michelle MERCIER-DE SHON, Georgia State University, [e-mail]

ABSTRACT

How do young children demonstrate and describe their musical selves?  What comprises and shapes their musical worlds?  This phenomenological study of lived experience (Van Manen, 1990) explored the perspectives of four 4th grade children (9-10 years of age) as they live in and live through music to formulate their musical identities.  Framed within perspectives of symbolic interaction theory (Blumer, 1969), communities of practice (Wenger, 1998), and figured worlds (Holland, et al., 1998), data were collected using methods consistent with qualitative inquiry.  These included: observations of quasi-formal music learning settings of musical playgroups and during community musicians’ presentations; close observations of children’s daily school lives; and planned discussion group interviews (O’Reilly, 2005).  Findings emerged from the data via a bricolage of existentialist (Morrisette, 1999; Holyroyd, 2001) and interpretative phenomenological analyses (Smith, 2003). Children in my study explored and expressed their musical identities through self-directed engagement across multiple modalities of singing, listening, performing on instruments, and creating music.  They engaged with these modalities in individualized and shared ways.  Singing was situated, by context and in concert with social and gender comparisons.  Listening, performing, and creating encompassed a trajectory from experimentation to intentionality, with continually embedded exploration and musical play. Findings indicated that children in middle childhood may actively shape their musical identities within a dynamic nexus of individualized and social continuums of music experience and learning.  These continuums may be understood along three dimensions: development; components, i.e., music participation and learning; and processes.  The developmental spectrum of children in middle childhood provides a fluid context for understanding musical identity, revealed not as a fixed entity, but through interweaving elements of their past, present, and future musical lives.  Self-directed music participation and learning may shape musical identity and provide a context for its expression through both musical and social roles, as children enact musical behaviors through social interaction.  Finally, children’s musical identity may be understood as a process, in which personal dialogue meets external discourses, as children continuously negotiate self-conceptions of musicality within and among their musical worlds.  Findings indicate that music teachers may offer opportunities for exploration and musical play as a basis for concurrently nurturing the develop of musical identities and fostering musical understanding.

Keywords: musical identity; musical playgroups; informal music learning; musical development; music modalities.