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Defamiliarization, Literacy and Ballet Blog Post

Learning about literacy (the reading and writing kind) has its own literacy. The social norm in American is for parents to read their children bedtime stories and for young children to pick up and develop skills through school. Each year the child is expected to improve and read more advanced books. In Learning to Read and Superman and Me we learn about two people who took the road less traveled to become extremely advanced in literal literacy and experienced prejudice because of their race. If literacy is defined as knowing ways of being in a particular situation then everyone has different literacys based on their unique experiences and reactions. Malcolm X was illiterate in genuine acts of love from Caucasian people toward African American people. He didnt experience genuine displays of compassion from Caucasians. He became literate and informed of other injustices while reading from a jail cell. However, there are plenty of people in the world today who show kindness to people from all walks of life. For example he never met Doc Hendley, who risks his life to provide clean water for people of various races, and raise awareness of the water crisis to citizens. There are many grotesque acts of hatred and prejudice in the world, however there are also selfless acts of love and kindness, from all races. Sherman Alexie came to be very textually literate, reading "Grapes of Wrath" as a young child. He probably went on to become more literate than most college students. College, is a literacy. It is a social norm and expected for American teenagers to go to college after High School. With this knowledge we can use metacognition and chose not to judge those who dont go to college. College isnt for everyone; every person has their own experiences, like every dancer has their own artistic path. One dancer might train their whole lives in ballet and go straight into a professional company after High School. Another male dancer might start dancing at the age of twenty and study at a College for dance. They both can end up in the same company; they just took different paths to get there. The link for the article I have below mentions the inventive use of ballet language, and discusses ballets literacy. Dance has a vocabulary; each singular movement can be used together to convey a bigger idea, universal theme or story. Ballet in particular has a very strict etiquette and literacy. For example, you should get to class early to warm up, stand when the teacher enters, be silent the entire class, be aware of your body language (no leaning against the bar or crossing your arms) and you are expected to condition and stretch outside of class. The article points out how the choreographer, Troy Schumacher has created works connected to literature without being literary.