Movement is a human’s primary need, which we need to promote from the earliest years. Already as newborns, we discover the world through our body and communicate with it. In my dissertation I focused on a toddler’s dance creation. At the beginning, this is based on the acquisition of basic movements, which we gradually upgrade and connect with the elements of dance – time, energy and space.
In the beginning of the theoretical part, the movement and its analysis are defined. Since movement and dancing are closely related, I defined the difference between them and described the elements of dance. The dance in the past and today is also briefly described, which I linked to my own experience. Next, I have described the importance of dance incentives for creation, key developmental characteristics of toddlers, the senses and the sense organs, their development in the earliest years and concluded the theoretical part with the connection between the senses and dancing.
The empirical part describes the practical connection between the senses and dancing. 5 activities are described and evaluated – in each of them the research of one of the five senses is in the forefront. I performed them in a group of children, aged 2–3 years. Through the activities I presented some examples of how we encourage the exploration of the senses through dancing and through the implementation I found out how toddlers react to such activities, how they experience them and what stimulated them the most to dance-movement creation.
Although toddlers still need a lot of external incentives, especially when exploring the senses, they responded very well to incentives, communicated with me and their peers with their bodies, and were creative to the best of their ability.
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