Dance the Beat

Get moving to music and capture the lively motion in the style of Keith Haring.

• 1.

  Study several of Keith Haring's artworks. Note two distinctive characteristics of his style: the use of marks to indicate movement and the way he outlines characters.

• 2.

  Play lively music and dance with your friends. Watch each other as you dance. How do your arms move? When you bend your knees, what does the rest of your body do? How do you hold your head and shoulders?

• 3.

  On white paper, use Crayola® Markers to create several line drawings of your friends dancing. Make your drawings seem to move by placing their arms and legs in active positions.

• 4.

  Fill both the figures and the space around them with active shapes and lines that remind you of the music and Haring's work.

Benefits

• Students study the artwork of Keith Haring to identify his style and techniques used to represent movement of the human body.
• Children observe each other's movements while dancing to lively music.
• Students represent each other's postures and movements in original artwork, using elements of Haring's style.

Adaptations

• Use a bright light to cast dancer's shadows. At intervals, children freeze in position, and trace the outlines of their shadows. Use these figures as super-sized Keith-Haring-style dancing mural figures.
• Draw moving figures performing many different types of activities, such as sports or work. Fill the art with appropriate shapes and lines.
• Experiment with different types of music-jazz, mariachi, rock, classical. Observe the ways rhythm and tempo affect movement. Draw one type of movement. Who can identify which kind of music the movements represent?