Skip to main content

Main navigation

Dance and Architecture Term 2 – 4

13 May – 1 November 2024

A Dance and STEAM Workshop for students | Stages 2 - Lower Stage 5 | Designed for students of all ages and abilities, this active workshop enables students to explore the Opera House site, and create choreography within the architecture of the building. Using simple dance and movement approaches, this workshop highlights engineering connections between the human body and the building.

Why can dance include imagination? ‘It can impact other people’s emotions’

Artist and student conversation

Exploring the architecture of the body through dance and movement

This workshop enables students to experience the geometry, engineering, materials and elements of the Sydney Opera House building through a series of movements, dance works and choreography with their bodies. Students consider how architects create buildings for people to inhabit, work, move and explore in urban spaces.

The Sydney Opera House architect Jorn Utzon was inspired by the world around him – the geometry of the wings of a seagull as it took flight; how snow, ice, clouds and sand could inspire the colours and textures of a building; and how the actions of builders and engineers who constructed the Opera House could move to and ‘perform’ the rhythms of the building. Students use these perspectives as they actively participate in this workshop.

In this workshop, students:

  • Use their bodies to create movement and dance sequences, drawing from specific architectural spaces in the Opera House as repositories of physical ‘memories’
  • Build skills and express themselves through physical movement to interpret ideas and communicate through dance
  • Explore their own anatomy through movement and create short choreography on their own and with classmates from their discoveries
  • Learn about biomimicry, and how biomechanics from nature can inspire design and architecture
  • Acquire a deeper appreciation for the design and beauty of the Opera House and feel a physical and personal connection to the site and heritage of the building

Curriculum links

Explore choreography, collaboration, the body in public places and the connection between the engineering of a building and human body in Dance, PDHPE and Mathematics

Download

Learning resources

The Opera House’s learning resources provide inspirational activities to watch, listen and read for students in the classroom or learning at home. 

Find learning resources

Ticket and Travel Subsidy

The Sydney Opera House is committed to providing the very best national and international performing arts experiences to NSW students as part of their educational studies.

The Sydney Opera House Arts Assist program provides the full cost of the Creative Learning performance ticket and $5 per student toward travel costs. School applications are assessed according to socioeconomic disadvantage, schools with special needs and individual responses regarding the School Profile and School Community.

The Sydney Opera House thanks and acknowledges our generous Arts Assist donors; The Greatorex Foundation and Sydney Opera House Ladies’ Committee.

Join our family of teachers and educators

Hear about upcoming performance and workshops for schools, along with the latest digital resources for students and teachers.

Sign up to our newsletter

Other information

You may also like

A women dances surrounded by falling paper. She is holding a book and her hair is in braids.
7 - 9 Aug 2024 Schools

Little Murmur

Schools Performance Stages 2 - 6 | Little Murmur is a new dance theatre show for schools, that features groundbreaking projection, an extraordinary soundscape and a blizzard of paper and confetti.

25 - 26 Sep 2024 Schools

Big Sky

Schools Performance Stages ES1 - 4 | Big Sky unfolds over a single night, from sunset to dawn and follows 12 unforgettable characters as they look forward to their futures, show off, get spooked, prank each other and get up to mischief.

25 - 26 Jul 2024 Schools

The River That Ran Uphill

Schools Performance | Stages 2 - 6 | In 2015, Cyclone Pam ravaged the South Pacific. Edgell Junior, a Ni-Vanuatu man from Pentecost Island, experienced and survived Cyclone Pam and its aftermath. Based on his lived experience, this moving production emphasises the real importance of community cooperation and resilience

Checking availability