Child's play – how a dancer started a movement

The sheer joy is clear for all to see on their faces. One of the children rolls over a large inflated ball and bursts out laughing.

Maggie, the key worker at Parkland Children's Centre, Leeds, is on all fours, letting the children lead the play. Children are queuing up to get into the movement area, desperate to express themselves naturally.

It may look like unstructured play, but it is all part of an initiative called Developmental Movement Play, which is key to helping young children learn more about their bodies, relate to each other and gain in confidence.

It is the brainchild of former dancer Penny Greenland. founder of Jabadao. And it isn't just her project, it is her passion and her life's work.

She believes totally that children should be allowed to move around as they please, without the constraints that we as parents and teachers subject them to.

"Invite a child of two to move whole-heartedly and spontaneously with you and they will probably be happy to play. Make the same invitation to an eight-year- old and you will probably be met with embarrassment," explains Penny.

"We adults bring this about. Unwittingly, we shut down children's natural enthusiasm for movement, then have to search for ways of ensuring they get enough exercise later in life.

"Movement, as much as a good diet, supports the growth of the brain and nervous system and is involved, therefore, in all aspects of development."

And this isn't any fluffy new age hippy type approach to education and child development. Penny is obsessed with researching and testing her theories over long periods of time.

Developmental Movement Play, as her programme for children from birth to six years old is called, was first evaluated in a long-term research project started in 1998.

Twenty-five early years groups took part in the project including Parklands Children's centre in 2002.

Kate Johnson, deputy manager at Parklands, in the Seacroft area of Leeds, was chosen as lead practitioner and now helps train other staff members.

"What I have learnt through DMP is that children are naturally drawn into what their body needs," explains Kate. "We put as little restriction on them. We want them to be spontaneous, for them to take the lead."

She says a child is never told not to do something.

"It may be that certain movements are more appropriate outside. Such as if we see a child hanging off the door handles then we

will suggest that they go outside and hang from the monkey bars."

Kate says she has noticed

a difference in the development of children

at Parklands since the introduction of Developmental Movement Play and it is clear that she is passionate about it.

The approach has also changed the way they

deliver other things at Parklands. A lot of the activities such as sand and painting are on the floor, to encourage the children to crawl and become physical.

"Crucially, DMP aims to support children's natural desire to move – and move freely – helping adults to see that, in our increasingly sedentary culture we often get in children's way, unwittingly undermining a natural and important developmental process," continues Penny, who

holds Parklands up as a shining example of how her theory works.

"The children take the lead, not the adults. When you say this to teachers, you can see them shudder. They think there will be chaos, but there isn't. No one gets hurt and the children express themselves freefly."

Penny explains that DMP is more than just a weekly session, it is introduced to every aspect of a child's day and can be adopted at home.

"If a child wants to get their coat then they can run, jump and use big movements to do so. It is about a change of mindset."

But Jabadao is much more than just about getting children to express themselves and develop through movement.

Penny came up with the idea in 1985 because, as a dancer, she felt she was in a unique position to help others. The original aim was to work with people with learning disabilities and the elderly, for whom movement could hold a key to communication.

"It was a way of making their very small movements seem very big," explains Penny, who received an MBE for her contribution to dance in 2001. "There is something elemental about using our bodies. It transcends language and culture."

Penny says she always knew she was going to be a dancer from an early age.

"I danced through my life," she says. After studying a theatre degree at Hull, she became involved in contemporary dance.

She founded a dance company but she knew from early on that she didn't want her dancers just to be about performance.

"I had a vision that dancers would be what actors had done with Theatre in Education. I wanted it to be issue-based. There just wasn't any dance company that operated like that."

She had a spell in community theatre in London but her heart was still very much in dance and she moved back to Yorkshire where she became a dance development officer and then a dance therapist.

But Penny became more interested in dance as a ritual and a celebration; as something fundamental

in society.

"Dance is our first language and yet we are so reserved and self-conscious in this country that we go and watch dance but very rarely get involved in it. But it is not what it looks like that is important; it is what it feels like. That's where Jabadao was born."

Jabadao is a folk dance from the Breton region of France which is all about celebration and ritual which, for Penny, sums up how she felt about dance.

She initially worked with people she describes as "frail"such as dementia sufferers and the disabled.

"We worked with people who didn't have the physical capacity to move big so we had to learn to move small.

It was all about the feeling

of movement.

"I wanted to create a different role for dancers in our society. Someone once called me a dance social worker."

Over the last 25 years Jabadao has grown and developed. Funded by the Arts Council, its head office is in Pudsey, with a development centre in Ipswich where Penny now lives to be near her elderly parents.

She and her team run "Jab" training courses – from one day to 12-month courses. They also run a mail order business selling equipment.

Beth Dunwoody, manager of Magic Tree Day Nursery at Belmont Grosvenor School, in Harrogate, went on a one- day General Spontaneous Movement Play course and was hooked.

"What I like about Jabadao is that it is all about the children; about them being aware of their bodies and movement," says Beth.

"We very much go with

the children; their mood

and interests at the time."

Beth says that she has seen the children's confidence grow. "I believe that this type of movement play really helps a child's development."

n www.jabadao.org