This week I read the Henle article: Mathematics that dances (Jim Henle, 2021)
I was excited thinking I might be able to 'relate' to this article more than the previous weeks ( I know, you all are going to get sick of me expressing my disconnect with mathematics and how I get anxiety...) because I love music & dance (more like grooving than dancing!) I hear music and I feel the beat and before you know it, without realizing, I will be swaying and moving to the beat.
Henle begins the article with this statement, "...pleasure. Usefulness is irrelevant. Significance, depth, even truth are optional...[if it's] in this column it's because its intriguing, or lovely, or just fun." THIS in itself grabbed my attention! And then a few disclaimers:
- "..Most of dance, its expressive power, its delicacy, its emotive content, is beyond the ken of mathematics."
- "...there is genuine mathematics in dance...that is not the subject of this column..."
- "...one can use dance to bring math alive...we won't do that here.
For me this was very similar to learning a new mathematical concept; the teacher knows what they are talking about -they know and understand where they are going with the end in sight- but those of us who have struggled with the abstraction of mathematics, incorporating something tangible while learning new concepts is extremely helpful, like the addition of a few dance steps that are very familiar!
Hi Grace,
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like you have a built in feeling for rhythm and pattern! In the belcastro and Schaffer article there is a merging of dance and math. In parts of their article they suggest dance as a way to better understand math concepts. Knowing about line and infinity in dance can help someone understand these ideas in math. Thank you for the reminder that experiencing something like rhythm and movement can be really important before trying to make those connections to math.
I did not look over the Henle article very carefully but your sample page was rather confusing! Based on the quotes I can understand your disappointment.
There seems to be a real challenge when trying to document on paper both abstract math and embodied dance. Perhaps it would be much easier if there was a video of the dances Henle was trying to describe.
Hi Grace,
ReplyDeleteThere must have been some sort of issue because all I could see was the title when I looked at your blog last week.
I looked at the dances in Henle's article and agree the descriptions and diagrams can be a little tricky to follow. I did notice change ringing was one of the dances, and it was also one of the types of mathematical poetry this week.
"the teacher knows what they are talking about -they know and understand where they are going with the end in sight" - This is a good reminder for me. To use the narrative metaphor from this week, it can be easy to forget that I can see the whole "story" and know how it unfolds, but students are only getting chapters or paragraphs at a time. Some students are ok with that, and some need to have a peek at the bigger picture or get a hint of what is coming next.