Home-A College of many cultures
- Our team
- From an orchard and vineyard to a school
- Our school culture
- Our school song and haka
- Languages in our school
- Cultural fusion
- Taste sensations from Samoa and the Phillipines
- Arts and Culture Week
- National Independence of Samoa Day
- Discovering different types of cultural dances in Waitakere College
- Waitakere College Arts and Cultural Awards
- Our long-awaited school Marae
- 12,000 miles to New Zealand citizenship
- Europe to Australia to a life in the circus
- Massive state to tiny island to green New Zealand
- Afghanistan to New Zealand
- India to New Zealand
- Around the world
- Research process
- Learning outcomes
- References and acknowledgements
Discovering different types of cultural dances in Waitakere College
We learn and explore about different cultures in dance so I interviewed one of Waitakere College’s favourite dance teachers, Ms Osborne, and asked her about the different types of cultural dances.
She gave me two examples of dance genres, gumboot dancing and lindy hop. Gumboot dancing started as a language involving stomping, clapping, and slapping, so that the Black South African miners could communicate (as they were forbidden to speak).
Another example is Lindy Hop. Lindy Hop is a mixture of white partner dancing and African tribal dancing, initially a mockery of posh white people dancing. Also the first break away partner dance (where they didn’t have to hold hands the whole time). Famous Black American dancers met at the Bats Corner for competitions and introduced aerials (throwing partner in the air). They also ended up in movies and TV shows which introduced the dance genres to the world.
Both of these genres are not very common in this generation in dance. Ms Osborne says the Dance Department wants to open student’s eyes up to dance genres other than the common ones such as hip hop, jazz and contemporary.
Jazmine
