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Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Picturing America: Dance Style
I enjoyed leading a workshop exploring art through movement at an event in Concord, NH yesterday exploring the possibilities for collaboration and interdisciplinary connections in a project called Picturing America. This event was sponsored by the above organization and it funding by the National Endowment for the Humanities, which the intention of helping students and citizens "gain a deeper appreciation of our country's history and character through the study and understanding of its art."
Check out the project here.
I enjoyed spending time with the following images:
Looking Down at Yosemite Valley, California, 1865
Albert Bierdstadt
American Landscape, 1930
Charles Sheeler
Fallingwater, 1935-1939
Frank Lloyd Wright
Cityscape 1, 1963
Richard Diebenkorn
Brooklyn Bridge, 1919-1920
Joseph Stella
... before leading this eclectic group of teachers, artists, historians, academics, and humanists in the following activity...
Main Activity: Time and Space Tableaux
Break into groups and share images - each group receives one image to focus their work, movement, and conversation on. Begin by asking participants to create a tableaux of some part of their piece of art using their bodies. They can attempt to represent a piece of the image or the whole image. Encourage group members to take turns viewing the tableaux from the outside to get a better idea of what their statues may look like to observers.
The second tableaux will focus on an artist’s earlier version of this image. What happened before the image we see now? Were the lines simpler, the space more open? Did the image start small and become bigger? Did the artist focus on one piece that developed into the image we see now? Did the image start as something completely different?
The third tableaux will focus on reinventing the form. What theme/element of this picture has your group focused the most on? How lines connect? The context of the image or the space the image exists within? Change it. Make it something different. Show us something new.
If time, participants can find ways to move through tableaux to tableaux. If not, each group will share in a sequence of their choice, their 3 tableaux. Allow for questions, comments, conversation after each group or after all groups have shared depending on time constraints.
Debrief: What, if any, nuances to these works of art did you have through playing with them kinesthetically? What did you learn about movement exploring it through the lens of art? What were the major themes that came up for you during these activities?
If only we were encouraged to experience interconnectivity more often...
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Moving Opera: Kids invited
Opera Theatre of Weston's January's performances of "Hansel and Gretel" included local kids as singers in the children's chorus and dancing as Angels and the Witch's cat, Safronia (remember Eliza from an earlier post?).
Check out the review here at the Rutland Herald.
Getting psyched for next year's "The Little Prince." You're invited too, you know.
Family Dancing
Anneka is 2 1/2 and Aria is 4. The bell sounds of their names are reflected in their whisper running straight to the big girl barres on the far edge of the dance studio, where their little girl bodies dangle, feet pointed, knees in action. Their mother Erica tilts her head and sighs, knowing that bringing them to the center of the room will happen only after they've played the parts of the older kids they find so awe-inspiring.
Today it is spring. We are greeted with sunshine and melting snow, even though the end of March, April, and perhaps even May could snow in store for us in our corner of southern Vermont. We celebrate by sharing our favorite spring things... jumping in mud puddles, pedaling around the airport on bicycles, watching things grow, and playing outside. We sculpt our bodies into flowers, bikers, and puddle-splashers, watching our statues come to life before dizzying ourselves with an extra run around the room.
"Birds they fly and birds they rest.
Which pretty birdy do you like best?"
We practice flight, exploring different wing shapes as we glide through space, and then find ourselves resting in different positions on the dirty marley floor. Our birds quickly morph into other animals as we perch ourselves on a tree to end our poem dance, which we repeat over and over again, finding rhythm in repetition.
As Erica and I rub our hands together and place them on different body parts, quieting our bodies, little Anneka and Aria use their mother as a jungle gym. Erica tells me this is the most practical part of class - learning to find calm in the midst of chaos.
Today it is spring. We are greeted with sunshine and melting snow, even though the end of March, April, and perhaps even May could snow in store for us in our corner of southern Vermont. We celebrate by sharing our favorite spring things... jumping in mud puddles, pedaling around the airport on bicycles, watching things grow, and playing outside. We sculpt our bodies into flowers, bikers, and puddle-splashers, watching our statues come to life before dizzying ourselves with an extra run around the room.
"Birds they fly and birds they rest.
Which pretty birdy do you like best?"
We practice flight, exploring different wing shapes as we glide through space, and then find ourselves resting in different positions on the dirty marley floor. Our birds quickly morph into other animals as we perch ourselves on a tree to end our poem dance, which we repeat over and over again, finding rhythm in repetition.
As Erica and I rub our hands together and place them on different body parts, quieting our bodies, little Anneka and Aria use their mother as a jungle gym. Erica tells me this is the most practical part of class - learning to find calm in the midst of chaos.
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