Balé Folclórico da Bahia
Balé Folclórico da Bahia is a popular international touring troupe from Salvador, a northeastern Brazil port city in the state of Bahia. This performance invites you to see, think, and wonder while broadening an appreciation of dance. The company’s theatrical vision celebrates a regional identity and expresses popular cultural traditions that include images and ideas of Africa. The city of Salvador’s vibrant dance culture is reflected in Balé Folclórico da Bahia’s historically rich repertoire of folk dances, including African slave dances; the African-Brazilian martial art form of capoeira; samba, which is quintessentially associated with both Brazil and African Brazilians; and dances that celebrate Carnival.
support provided by
McQuaide Blasko Endowment
(can be printed)
Watch a history and preview of Balé Folclórico da Bahia
Discussion Tools
Taken from “Visible Thinking,” Project Zero Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Think/Puzzle/Explore: A Thinking Routine that Sets the Stage for Deeper Inquiry
This routine activates prior knowledge, generates ideas and curiosity and sets the stage for deeper inquiry. It helps students take stock of what they already know and then pushes students to identify puzzling questions or areas of interest to pursue. Teachers can get a good sense of where students are on a conceptual level. By returning to the thinking routine after seeing the performance, they can identify development and progress. The third question is useful in helping students lay the groundwork for independent inquiry.
The class can engage in the routine together to create a group list of ideas. Between each phase of the routine, that is with each question, adequate time needs to be given for individuals to think and identify their ideas. You may even want to have students write down their individual ideas before sharing them as a class. In some cases, you may want to have students carry out the routine individually on paper or in their heads before the group discussion.
Keep a visible record of the student ideas. If you are working in a group, ask students to share some of their thoughts and collect a broad list of ideas about the topic on chart paper. Or students can write their individual responses on post-it notes and later add them to a class list of ideas.
Note that it is common for students to have misconceptions at this point—include them on the list so all ideas are available for consideration after further study. Students may at first list seemingly simplistic ideas and questions. Include these on the whole class list but push students to think about things that are truly puzzling or interesting to them.
1. What do you think you know about this topic?
2. What questions or puzzles do you have?
3. What does the topic make you want to explore?
Post-performance Discussion of Balé Folclórico da Bahia
These thinking routines to aide classroom discussion are from “Artful Thinking,” Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Helpful terms to use when doing the routines are 1) observe which means to describe how something appears, 2) elaborate which means to expand on something in detail, and 3) interpret which means to explain what something means.
I SEE/I THINK/I WONDER Thinking Routine
This routine is for talking about why aspects of Balé Folclórico da Bahia look the way they do. Ask students to make an observation about an aspect of the performance and follow up with what they think might be going on or what they think this observation might mean. Encourage students to back up their interpretation with reasons. Ask the students to think more deeply about what makes them wonder.
What did you see?
What did you think about that?
What did it make you wonder?
Student responses to the routine can be written down and recorded so that a class chart of observations, interpretations and wonderings are listed for all to see and return to during the course of study.
ELABORATION GAME Thinking Routine
This is a thinking routine to encourage your students to develop careful observations and descriptions.
As a group, observe and describe several different sections of the performance.
One person identifies a specific section of the performance and describes what he or she sees. Another person elaborates on the first person’s observations by adding more detail about the section. A third person elaborates further by adding yet more detail, and a fourth person adds yet more. Observers: Only describe what you see. Hold off giving your ideas about the performance until the last step of the routine.
After four people have described a section in detail, someone else identifies a new section of the performance and the process starts over. Four more people take turns making increasingly detailed observations. Then the process starts over again, and so on, until everyone in the group has had a turn or all sections of the performance has been described.
After the performance has been fully described, as a group, discuss some of your ideas about it. For example, what do you think is going on? (And what did you observe that makes you say that?).