Guest Post: The Runaway Bunny

Today's post is by my friend and colleague Amanda Whitehead, who teaches at Shawl-Anderson Dance Center in Berkeley, CA:

I use Margaret Wise Brown's The Runaway Bunny in ballet class for improvisation time at the end of class.  Though Bunny may not be an obvious first choice for movement, the transformational imagery in it is irresistably rich.  The little bunny who wishes to run away becomes a fish, then a rock, a bird, a flower, a sailboat, and a trapeze artist.  Students dancing the story can explore slippery, solid, and ethereal textures; still, wavy, and swinging motions; and quick, slow, heavy, and light dynamics, to name just a few possibilities.  A different music selection for each transformation really brings out the changes; for example, my Runaway Bunny is scored with Britten, Holst, Vaughan Williams, Dvorak, Copland, and others.

There are two added bonuses to using this book:  First, it is already familiar to many children, so adding movement and music just lets them enjoy a favorite story on new levels.  They discover how something they already know can offer new, unexpected levels of experience.  Secondly, the story acts out an important early childhood developmental milestone: separation from parents.  Dance class can be right up there with preschool as a first activity undertaken without parents.  So the theme of testing limits, whether by swimming, flying, climbing, or swinging, will be something the students easily engage with.

Now that I think about it, there is a third added bonus to The Runaway Bunny: it will be an old favorite to teachers, who probably first read it when they were children!  And the more invested teachers are in the material we present, the more invested our students will become.  I wish you great fun transforming along with the children you teach.