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Pedagogy and Human Movement: Theory, Practice, Research

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Pedagogy and Human Movement: Theory, Practice, Research
(review)
Sara K. Armstrong

Theatre Topics, Volume 22, Number 1, March 2012, pp. 104-105 (Article)

Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: 10.1353/tt.2012.0007

For additional information about this article

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/tt/summary/v022/22.1.armstrong.html

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104 Theatre Topics
clearly demonstrates the important reciprocal relationship
between theory and practice. Engaging Performance succeeds
by modeling praxis: “the interplay of reflection and action
that characterizes cultural activism” (12).
Cohen-Cruz also demonstrates cultural activism by
writing a very readable book for a broad audience. Theatre
scholars can enjoy her varied theoretical approaches, theatre
students can appreciate her clear explanations, and theatre
fans can learn about diverse performance styles. Cohen-Cruz
practices what she preaches: drawing on readings in textual
analysis, history, theory, sociology, cultural policy, and urban
studies, she demonstrates her claim that engaged artists
must be multidisciplinary. She explains concepts deftly, and
her descriptions of the engaged-performance projects are
vivid and engaging. Jargon is defined in the text or glossed
in endnotes. For example, in chapter 1, “Playwrighting:
Putting Plays to Use,” she outlines Brecht’s concept of Epic
Theatre in a few pages, and uses endnotes to quickly explain
Aristotle’s concept of catharsis. The entire book might
serve as a textbook for a praxis-based undergraduate class;
the chapter on training the engaged artist could challenge
graduate students in a pedagogy class to think about the
future of arts education in the academy. Cohen-Cruz writes
that the artists she chose to discuss in the book create work
that “contains the dimensions of craft, scholarship, and
community engagement” (189). Engaging Performance:
Theatre as Call and Response contains the same: clear writing,
multidisciplinary scholarship, and a passionate engagement
with performances of meaningful cultural expression for both
artists and communities.
SUSANNE SHAWYER
Independent scholar
Pedagogy and Human Movement: Theory, Practice,
Research. By Richard Tinning. Routledge Studies in Physical
Education and Youth Sport. New York: Routledge, 2009;
pp. 254.
As interdisciplinarity’s favor within the academy
grows, it becomes increasingly necessary for university
educators to develop their abilities to communicate with
their colleagues in other fields. Richard Tinning’s Pedagogy
and Human Movement offers theatre and dance educators a
glimpse into the ways that their peers in human movement
studies (HMS) have to date approached education by, for,
and about the body. Given the centrality of bodies to the
teaching and theorization of performance practice, this
exogenous perspective sets the stage for a rich interdisciplinary
conversation about the epistemological assumptions that
underlie teaching and learning in physical-training situations.
Tinning begins by identifying a tendency within
the scholarship on teaching and learning (SOTL) to use the
term “pedagogy” synonymously with instructional methods,
teaching style, curricular design, and educational outcomes.
Arguing for a less compartmentalized understanding, he
suggests that pedagogy be considered as “a purposeful
encounter between teacher, learner, and subject matter [in
which] the purpose is to (re)produce knowledge.” This
framework allows him to explore the complex interplay
that occurs between what teachers want students to know,
and what students enter a learning environment already
knowing or valuing. Acknowledging the messiness of this
exchange, he introduces the idea of pedagogical work to
describe the consequences of pedagogy, both intentional
and unintentional. Tinning uses the remainder of the book
to examine the pedagogical work produced in HMS relative
to physical activity, bodies, and health.
It is a wide net that Tinning casts. Among the many
topics he considers are the coaching of elite athletes, the
politics of body measurement, and the disciplinary attributes
of early twentieth-century exercise equipment. While always
interesting, the relevance of these subjects to theatre and dance
pedagogy is not always intuitive. From an interdisciplinary
perspective, his work is most provocative when it highlights
disciplinary assumptions about the nature and desired
function of the body that emerge in pedagogical practice. In
the third section of the book, for example, Tinning argues that
HMS educators frequently uncritically reproduce methods of
instruction that they have inherited from their forebears. This
results, he notes, in a disproportionate focus on the body as
a “biophysical thing” that obscures the role culture plays in
shaping the body both literally and metaphorically. Seeking
to redress this imbalance, he advocates adopting what he calls
a “modest critical pedagogy.” An orienting way of thinking
rather than a prescriptive strategy of doing, this pedagogical
approach would engage prospective teachers in reflection
on their beliefs and dispositions. Challenging the dominant
model of the body that circulates in HMS, he suggests, will
require an approach that marries personal anecdote and
marginalized perspectives with more traditional scientific
articulations of the body.
Tinning’s thoughtful interrogation of pedagogy
within his field prompts the outside reader to ask: In what ways
do we as theatre and dance educators reproduce the methods
by which we were taught? What are the unacknowledged
assumptions of these methods, and what bodily possibilities
do we erase for our students by perpetuating them? A similar
generative correspondence might also be found in Tinning’s
discussion of how “problems” like obesity are treated in
the HMS classroom. He notes that in recontextualizing
research findings for instructional purposes, ambiguity and
disagreements are smoothed over, making “science seem more
certain than it actually is” (166). Is there an analog in our
field? In privileging clarity and accessibility, what debates
do we keep from our students, and what might they gain
from encountering this kind of epistemological uncertainty?
Pedagogy and Human Movement is commendable
in its focus on diversity. Tinning repeatedly draws the
reader’s attention to the multiplicity of ways that bodies
and their behaviors can be understood, and gestures to the
manifold effects these framings can have on student learning.
Unfortunately, in seeking to undermine dominant Western
models of thinking about bodies, he defaults to an overly
simplistic juxtaposition of Western and Eastern approaches

to the body (in chapter 8) that problematically conflates
the West with Aristotle and the East with Confucius and
flattens out the rich heterogeneity on both sides of this binary.
Unsurprisingly, given his disciplinary situation, Tinning also
fails to meaningfully account for the ways in which physical
activity and the body are taught/learned in performing arts
training. Although the book’s description promises that dance
falls within its scope, dance pedagogy receives only cursory
consideration, with its treatment limited to fewer than five
pages. Theatre receives still less attention: it is mentioned
only once in a comparison to the scripted nature of Swedish
gymnastics (51) in an unsophisticated analogy that reveals
fundamental misunderstandings about the complexity
and breadth of theatrical performance and training. Given
Tinning’s sensitivity to the role that scholarly publications
play in knowledge formation (in chapter 12), his near erasure
of performing arts pedagogy is particularly disheartening. The
pedagogical work done by such an omission is a devaluing of
the impact that performance training has, both positive and
negative, on the ways bodies and body usage are culturally
constructed.
Despite this, Tinning’s work has much to offer.
He provides accessible glosses of key ideas from SOTL,
models the application of theory to the analysis of classroom
interactions, and offers a general history of the development
of pedagogy and pedagogical research in a discipline that,
like the related disciplines of theatre, dance, and performance
studies, is invested in cultivating bodies and their abilities
toward specific ends. Moving rapidly among literature
reviews, personal anecdotes, suggested reading lists, and
“factional” representations of classroom scenarios, Tinning’s
writing style occasionally feels unwieldy. His decision to avoid
a smooth narrative, however, allows him to demonstrate the
modest critical pedagogy he advocates. By embracing diverse
rhetorical strategies, he offers multiple points of entry to any
given idea, highlights the gaps and disagreements in research
on body-centric pedagogies, and calls the reader to assess,
rather than simply accept, his arguments—a challenge we
should accept.
SARA K. ARMSTRONG
Northwestern University
Say Word! Voices from Hip Hop Theater: An Anthology.
Edited by Daniel Banks. Critical Performances series. Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011; pp. 400.
“I am part of a generation of artists born under the
sign of Hip Hop” (vi), states Daniel Banks, theatre scholar
and editor of Say Word! Voices from Hip Hop Theater. Whether
or not you believe in the zodiac, hip hop as a sign is an ideal
metaphor to encapsulate the cultural phenomenon and its
influence on a global scale. Hip hop was born out of necessity
for change, and now, as the necessity for innovation and
hyper-creativity in theatre is on the rise, Banks offers a unique
anthology that begins to fill this gap, positioning Hip Hop
Theater as a fresh, viable intercultural vehicle to practice
and promote social activism in the arts. Say Word! ushers this
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Book Reviews 105
relatively new genre out of the margins and into an American
theatrical center begging for ingenuity and works that reach
various demographics. Complete with a concise history of
hip hop, eight Hip Hop Theater pieces, a wiki-discussion
with Hip Hop Theater artists, and several glossaries (to
decode the often coded language), this anthology is essential
for arts practitioners, professors, and activists to use in- and
outside the classroom.
An anthology of Hip Hop Theater necessarily must
begin with a definition of the term itself, as it has come to
represent a multitude of modes of artistic expression. Fittingly,
Banks provides a solid foundation for the anthology’s content
by offering his definition of hip hop: “My Hip Hop is one that
unites people around the globe under the banner of creative
collaboration, using all its performance elements as a common
vocabulary to share our stories with each other and with our
audiences” (viii). Thus Hip Hop Theater, inheriting these
same qualities, can be used to offer a voice to the marginalized
and voiceless, strengthen communities, and highlight various
modes of language, textuality, and vocality. Banks states that
the works in this anthology have a “rigorous understanding
of how to meld Hip Hop and theater into a genre that can
speak to a wide audience” (viii). He does not suggest that
these are the only examples of Hip Hop Theater available;
rather, he highlights these works due to his involvement in
their productions or admiration for their artistry. Although
many other works could have been included, Banks notes
that there are playwrights working in this genre who do not
classify their work as Hip Hop Theater, simply because a
succinct definition for this type of theatre does not exist. Thus
Say Word! allows playwrights the opportunity to locate their
work within this genre, adding to the canon of identifiable
Hip Hop Theater.
The introduction is subtitled “Hip Hop Theater’s
Ethic of Inclusion.” Here, Banks discusses the ethnic plurality
of hip hop, providing a brief overview of the different ethnic
groups that are enmeshed in the cultural phenomenon—three
of the eight contributing authors do not identify as African
American. Banks delineates hip hop culture from hip hop
music by highlighting the pivotal role that hip hop has played
in transnational agendas and the arts. With a deft hand, Banks
covers several key aspects of hip hop (the cipher, rap, break
dancing, and so on) and credits such pioneers of the genre
as Afrika Bambaataa, Kool Herc, and Grandmaster Flash.
The eight Hip Hop Theater pieces in the anthology
are separated into three sections determined by the way
in which they appear, both on the page and onstage. The
sections are: Spoken Word Theater, Hip Hop Theater Plays,
and Solo Performance. These three categories nicely frame
the anthology, because it allows both the practitioner and
the student to easily locate material that complements their
pedagogical needs. The Spoken Word Theater section is
comprised of three full-length works, in which the writers
meticulously play with language by conflating poetry, prose,
and chasmal rhythms—an essential signifier of hip hop
language. For example, Goddess City by Abiola Abrams and
Antoy Grant employs three characters that use “call and
response and overlapping verse” (25). Because sentences and