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Musical Co-creativity and Learning—the Fluid Body Language of Receptive-Responsive Dialogue

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Abstract

This article explores how a musical awareness of natural bodily form as an expression of receptive-responsive relationship between stillness and movement can contribute to co-creative dialogue and deep learning that reaches beyond the often superficial knowledge and praxis of intellectually constituted thought and language. It will draw especially on findings from research on the Kokas pedagogy an experiential extension of the Kodaly method of music education combining improvised movement and collective reflection. These findings highlight how the physical dimensions of this pedagogy cultivated new, embodied modes of creative ideation and connectivity, presenting unique challenges and opportunities in the observed educational contexts.

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Notes

  1. Note that the music-movement sessions based on the Kokas pedagogy have been implemented in various settings over the past 50 years. Although the pedagogy has mostly been used in the early and primary years, it was not developed as an age- or stage-specific music pedagogy. Klara Kokas introduced it to older age groups too, including adults. For example, the post-graduate accreditation programme for the Kokas pedagogy itself is grounded in such experience-centred learning and teaching.

  2. This study has been approved by the Western Sydney University Human Research Ethics Committee (approval number H11728) and the Ethics Committee of the Liszt Academy of Music. The participants’ (and legal guardians’) informed consent was obtained for the use of small video segments and images in publications and presentations disseminating the findings. In order to protect the anonymity of the participants, fictional names are used. Images and video segments have been distorted.

  3. In Szilvi’s case, imagination and musical focus are intertwined. This is different from the imaginative experience of the solitary boy in Fig. 5, who says he was the sun. In the case of the young boy, there is no observable correspondence between movement and music—and his imaginative experiences will remain disembedded during subsequent sessions.

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Funding

The research reported here was supported by Western Sydney University’s Academic Development Programme.

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  1. School of Education, Western Sydney University, Sydney, Australia

    Eva Vass

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  1. Eva Vass
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Correspondence to Eva Vass.

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Vass, E. Musical Co-creativity and Learning—the Fluid Body Language of Receptive-Responsive Dialogue. Hu Arenas 1, 56–78 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42087-018-0009-7

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