Performing Arts
The Arts Whakatauki
Te toi whakairo, ka ihiihi, ka wehiwehi, ka aweawe te ao katoa.
Artistic excellence makes the world sit up in wonder.
The whakataukī speaks of how a creative outcome can evoke a powerful response. When experiencing artworks, the pinnacle of excellence is achieved through empowering, challenging, and enriching the self and others.
What are the Arts about?
The Arts are powerful forms of expression that recognise, value, and contribute to the unique bicultural and multicultural character of Aotearoa New Zealand, enriching the lives of all New Zealanders. The Arts have their own distinct languages that use both verbal and non-verbal conventions, mediated by selected processes and technologies. Through movement, sound, and image, the Performing Arts transform people’s creative ideas into expressive works that communicate layered meanings.
In the Arts, students explore, refine, and communicate ideas as they connect thinking, imagination, senses, and feelings to create works and respond to the works of others. Studying Performing Arts offers a myriad of benefits beyond simply honing one’s artistic abilities. Students who engage in Performing Arts nurture their creativity, self-expression, and emotional intelligence. The subjects foster personal growth, enhance communicate skills and provide a deeper understanding of oneself and the world.
In Drama, students will understand that the function of drama is to heal, educate, entertain, or transform society. They discover how theatre can either challenge the status quo or reinforce it, gaining an awareness of how impactful the medium can be. Drama provides opportunities for students to express their identities and heritages, and explore the heritages of others, creating empathy and understanding for the experiences and whakapapa of people from diverse backgrounds.
In dance education, students learn to communicate through movement and interpret meaning from movement. Learning in Dance supports students to expand the ways they express ideas, feelings, values, and beliefs, as well as how they understand those of others. Students develop literacy in dance as they learn about, and extend skills in movement, performance, and choreography.
Through music, students can develop a deeper understanding of themselves, and explore different contexts and kaupapa. Music can be a waka for students to connect with their whakapapa and engage with contexts, spirituality, emotions, and the ideas of others. They can build confidence as artists by bringing their own experiences and cultures to their music making.
Studying Media studies is about the active exploration, analysis, creation, and enjoyment of the media and its products. Students engage with the impact of the media on our society and how to contribute to this ever-advancing medium.
Why study the Arts?
Arts education explores, challenges, affirms, and celebrates unique artistic expressions of self, community, and culture.
Learning in, through, and about the arts stimulates creative action and response by engaging and connecting thinking, imagination, senses, and feelings. By participating in the arts, students’ personal well-being is enhanced. As students express and interpret ideas within creative, aesthetic, and technological frameworks, their confidence to take risks is increased. Specialist studies enable students to contribute their vision, abilities, and energies to arts initiatives and creative industries.
In the Arts, students learn to work both independently and collaboratively to construct meanings, produce works, and respond to and value others’ contributions. They learn to use imagination to engage with unexpected outcomes and to explore multiple solutions.
Arts education values young children’s experiences and builds on these with increasing sophistication and complexity as their knowledge and skills develop. Through the use of creative and intuitive thought and action, learners in the arts are able to view their world from new perspectives. Through the development of arts literacies, students, as creators, presenters, viewers, and listeners, are able to participate in, interpret, value, and enjoy the arts throughout their lives.
Studying the Arts helps us understand diverse cultural perspectives and worldviews by examining the rich cultural histories and traditions, from Aotearoa and worldwide, that are expressed through performance. It allows us to recognise the uniqueness of our place in the Pacific, the identity of Aotearoa New Zealand, and the rich cultural histories and traditions from all over the world that are expressed through performance.
Through the relationships creators and performers make with audiences, The Arts exist as a powerful medium to foster hauora – nurturing and maintaining both individual and community wellbeing in its ability to empower and inspire others. Students engage with the ways in which the Arts can uplift and sustain the mana of communities, groups, and individuals.
Baradene College