Primary school music

Primary teaching and music qualifications - a rare combination, not only in New Zealand today but in primary schools the world over for more than a decade. Helen Stowasser (1993) writes of 'insecure music teachers' and questions the adequacy of teacher education courses. The Arts in the New Zealand Curriculum states: 'The arts develop the artistic and
aesthetic dimensions of human experience. They contribute to our intellectual ability and to our social, cultural and spiritual understandings. They are an essential element of daily living and of lifelong learning' [the italics are mine]. If our Ministry of Education truly believes this and wants
to ensure that the music discipline is adequately taught, then there are some issues to be addressed, such as recruitment of musically capable teachers; acceptable standards of professional expertise in music; content, length and timing of pre-service programmes; and making provision for teachers' ongoing development.

Why teach music in schools?

One of the most pressing problems for contemporary school education is an overcrowded curriculum. The so-called 'National Curriculum' developed as a result of the Australian Education Council's Hobart meeting in 1989 and the subsequent publication of a series of 'Statements' and 'Profiles' by the Curriculum Corporation in 1994 consolidated the school curriculum into eight Key Learning Areas (Curriculum Corporation 1994a, 1994b). Since that time most states have moved away from school-based curriculum development and have embraced the National Curriculum but with adaptations to suit their own needs. In the case of Victoria there have been two iterations of the National Curriculum in the form of Curriculum and Standards Frameworks. In the original version, Music was one of the five arts strands specified for years P to 6 and one of the six strands for years 7 to 12 (Board of Studies 1995). With the CSF2, Music is now one of three possible arts form included under Performing Arts which, with Visual Arts, form the two strands specified for years P to 4 (Board of Studies 2000). Music is then included in its own right as one of six Arts strands for years 5 to 12. However, effectively the CSF2 represents a significant loss of ground for Music at the lower and middle primary school levels in Victoria.

Music education research in Australia - 2006

This article summaries some research on music education in Australia. During 2006, the Bibliography of Australian Music Education Research (BAMER) database has undergone a major revision with the addition of several newly-located research studies and the updating of existing inaccurate or incomplete entries. The 27th World Conference of the International Society for Music Education (ISME) was held at the Kuala Lumpur Conference Centre in Malaysia from 16 to 21 July and was attended by several Australian delegates. Forthcoming conferences are listed.

Exhausting dance : performance and the politics of movement, by Andre Lepecki

The article reviews the book "Exhausting Dance: Performance and the Politics of Movement," by Andre Lepecki.

Interactive dance performance : movement data and the 'materiality' of the system

This paper describes a recent performance work I made using dance and live feed video
processing, 1 + x: mid-range projections, commissioned by the Seoul Contemporary Dance
Company and first performed in Melbourne in July 2005. This work forms a basis for discussing
my interest in creating performance images that reveal 'interiority'. I am interested in how you
embed the 'feel' of the human systematically in an interactive structure, and how that process
can produce a poetic that arises from the detailed and nuanced play between real and virtual
images on the same screen. How do you abstract and play with a performer's movement, play
with it in real and virtual time, so that it gives the work an emotional charge? Its like playing with
the process of 'becoming virtual' - and I'm being deliberately Deleuzian about that - how do you
'become virtual' in the sense of melding performer and image so that the meaning exists
between - in the connection between the two?

This quest to get the energy, the 'lived', 'felt' quality of the movement into the imagery gives rise
to research questions about how 'presence' is perceived in movement. What elements of the
raw movement data do you need to keep and what can you throwaway, and still keep the
personality, the emotion, the 'life' of that movement? How do you make a virtual, interactive
performance system that has its own 'materiality'?