EXPLORING INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE FOR STRENGTHENING AESTHETIC APPRECIATION IN PRE-TEACHING ACTIVITIES

Abstract

Art education intends to eliminate the silent consciousness in order to better understanding to humanity. It is also a holistic process ideal for a "healthy" mental and thought. Creating dance as a part of educating through arts,  develops important student’s characters, including aesthetic appreciation.  The challenge came up as the creative processes integrated with the curriculum of merdeka belajar put dance students to demonstrate their skill in tutoring younger students in the Program Mengajar di Sekolah (PMS).  This research aims to seek how the students convey the aesthetic appreciation during and after their activities in the PMS, and how they would have to deal with pre-teaching activities within their basic skill and knowledge of dance. I used an artistic-based research method, engage with project-based learning to accommodate the student-centered learning process. Within the study of Herbert E. Read, Simone Weil, and Jacqueline Smith-Autard, the students created dance through exploring indigenous knowledge (history, folklore, and tradition). As a result, the students experienced the organic art praxis in producing dance pieces that address their aesthetic appreciation. Aesthetic appreciation enriched the authentic vocabularies that provided new artistic understanding, which lead the students to the realm of sustainable creativity.