1. Miyuki Jitsuyama
Senior Seminar p.3
May 8th 2012
Graduation Project Script
Slide 1: Title slide/ Introduction
Me: Hi. My name is Miyuki Jitsuyama. I am eighteen years old and I have attended ISB for 6
years. Today I want to talk about how different ways of knowing have affected my learning
experiences in performing art field and helped me to grow as a dancer.
Interviewer: How does dance affect your high school life and what is a specific example of your
learning experience that have affected you as a dancer?
Slide 2: Overview of my Learning Experience
Me: Dance means a lot to me, and that is why I have been doing it the whole high school life,
and it is one of the things I am passionate about. So I cannot imagine a day without dancing and I
have been taking dance class since middle school. When I came to high school, I chose to take
IB Dance class. In the class, I’ve learned how to choreograph a dance piece, how to analyze a
dance piece and how to be creative with movements. At first I was dancing just because I liked
to dance, but now after learning all of those things, to me, dancing means a lot more than before.
Interviewer: So how were different ways of knowing affected your learning in IB Dance?
Slide 3: WOK #1 Perception
Me: Now, I can connect my learning experience with the ways of knowing and first one I want
to talk about is perception. Dancers perform on the stage and entertain people; perception is very
important since the audience come and watch us. Perception includes sight, sound, touch, taste
and smell. In dance pieces, we might not express the taste and smell, but then “sight”, “sound”
and “touch” are the very important concepts in dance.
We have to include movements that give an impact for the audience and do dramatic movements
to play with audience’s “sight”. Music plays an important part in dance since it sets the mood of
the piece and people listen to the beat of the music and sight the movement at the same time. The
relationships between dancers are also important especially when the dance piece have story to
it. To emphasize the dancer’s character, we need to see how dancers react to other dancers and
see how they do partner works and see their relationship with other characters.
Expectation can influence what people see. And sometimes the audience already expect some
movements to happen in the dance piece. For example, when a dancer starts to jog (or sprint),
audiences might expect that dancer to jump or flip. But when I was choreographing a dance
piece, I thought it would be more interesting if I do the opposite from what the audiences are
expecting to see.
And sometimes we use the splotlight to play with audiences’ selectivity of perception and let
them to look at the important part on the stage and overlook the unimportant ones.
Slide 4: WOK #2 Language
We don’t speak, so we move. Dance does not necessary includes verbal language, but the
movements can speak for us. In some of the dance pieces, dancers even say some phrases or
words that connect with the theme of the dance. We usually use gestures to speak. Gestures we
use in dance are also known as body language. We see the movement and take in the message
behind it and we use that to communicate. We all speak the same language in dance but how we
speak might be different. So depending on how we use the movement to speak our language, for
example by using gestures, what one person means when they say something may not be what

2. another person understands when they see it depending on how they analyze it. For example, just
to say “I am mad”, there are so many ways to express that through gestures and that language is
very creative. Some people might stomp the floor, or some people might swing their arms
around. I realized that every individual may have different ways to express one particular word.
Slide 5: WOK # 3 Emotion
Dancers dance to express some emotions that have been set with the theme or story of the dance
piece. We usually choose primary emotions to express since we do not really talk out loud during
dance pieces, and if the emotion is way too complicated, it is way too hard to express it and hard
for the audience to understand it. So the simple 6 primary emotions, which are: happiness,
sadness, fear, anger, surprise, disgust; work well with dance.
Also for a dance piece to be interesting, of course we have to put some technical moves to make
it interesting, but also, the audience’s emotions has to attach with the piece as well. If the
audience can not find themselves connecting with the piece at all (emotionally), they will get
bored and when they have that kind of emotion in their mind, they will bias towards the piece
and just conclude it as “it was a boring dance piece”.
The James-Lagne theory works with dancing. When people watch a dance piece and gets like
goose bumps, they know that the dance piece is amazing or when people see the piece and start
to cry, they know the piece is emotional because they had the physical change first.
Slide 6: Conclusion
By learning the ways of knowing such as perception, language and emotion, it allowed me to
connect those with dance and it made me to widen up my view and learn what I have to do with
dance moves so that the audience will “know” what we are trying to portray.
Before I could only view dance from one point of view but now I can look at it from the
audience’s point of view and I know the limitation of knowledge now so it helps me to adjust on
dance choreography so that the message behind the dance piece will be well expressed.