Motif and Manipulation: Choreographing the Five-Paragraph Essay.

This article serves as an in-practice guide to help teachers facilitate the creation of a dance piece using the five-paragraph essay format to explore themes through motif and manipulation. It is an outline of the process that begins with the selection of a theme and the development of a motif to represent that theme. It compares the development of an introduction, body, and conclusion to the creation of a motif and its manipulations. This is done through a discussion of writing techniques including the use of attention grabbers, transition words, and FRIES (Facts, Reasons, Incidents, Examples, Statistics) and what their counterparts might be in a choreographic work. This article is based on the author's experience as both a high school language arts and dance teacher in a public high school, and it highlights the culminating activity in a high school choreography class. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]