Diana Schuemann
Dance as an Educational Tool for Teaching About the Holocaust in Israeli High Schools
2018 | Full access
This research draws on students’, teachers’, and choreographers’ current understandings of Holocaust Education, to explore the use of dance for teaching about the Holocaust in secular high schools.
Depictions of the Holocaust have emerged in various forms of Contemporary and Modern Art. These are derived from different narratives of the Holocaust, created by survivors, their children, and the following generations. The Visual arts and performing arts, specifically dance, can offer a way to express, to reflect upon, to protest against or to resist individual and collective trauma related to the Holocaust. As the arts are increasingly being utilized to express experiences and thoughts about the Holocaust, questions can now be raised regarding the specific use of dance in Holocaust Education.
A handful of choreographers from Israel and beyond have dealt with the topic of the Holocaust in their stage-based and non stage-based works, which draw on both theatrical and social dance. Yet, a paucity of research exists on the specific role of dance in Holocaust Education. This thesis will investigate the use of dance for teaching about the Holocaust, as a medium that not only utilizes historical facts and judgements about victims, perpetrators, bystanders, or resistors, but that also enables students to reflect on the Holocaust on a personal and emotional level. It will achieve this through the analysis of interviews with students and teachers who do not have prior experience in the field of dance, and with choreographers who have explored the Holocaust in their work. Ultimately, the aim is to explore how dance acts as an embodied teaching tool, which allows students, teachers, and choreographers alike to viscerally encounter collective memory and to explore an individual understanding on the topic, which may not be achieved by learning from historical facts alone.
Supervisors:
Prof. Arie Kizel
Dr. Henia Rottenberg