Education

Word Dance (K-6)

Word Dance, designed for students in 2nd through 5th grades and enjoyed by all students, is an exploration of communication. From spelling and grammar to poetry and literature, Word Dance puts text in motion and looks at the power of both words and dance to communicate ideas and images. Teachers give this program top ratings.

Includes:

What's In a Word? Students read along as dancers create words, including compound words, a palindrome, prepositions, action words and more.

Audience participation looks at sentence structure through movement. (This exercise can be used again and again in the classroom)

The performance concludes with a delightful original story by Brian Barnhart called “The Wonderous Misadventures of Bobby and Sprout” with a playful cast of characters including a child, a bird and a cat!

And much more...

Junior/Senior High School

First Day/New School is being developed as the centerpiece for the 940 dance company dance education program targeting junior high and high schools.

We will use First Day/New School to focus the workshops and discussions that follow our performances. Here, the company's goal is to show students how to view their own lives as "works of art," and help them to create their own "First Day/New School" using specific movements and imagery from their own memories.

In auditorium settings, we will weave together a day of experiences from different students willing to offer ideas. For example: What were their best/ most melodramatic excuses for avoiding school? What were their worst experiences with gossip? Who helped them on their first day of school? Just how boring IS school? What was their best learning experience?

Using movement and vocal improvisation, the dancers will then bring the students' experiences to life onstage. This exercise will demonstrate how each student's life can be expressed and transformed as an artistic statement. Ultimately, First Day/New School will help students understand their lives as continuous opportunities for creation, improvisation, and moment-to-moment choice.

Just as the teenager in First Day/New School will experience a full gamut of emotions, so too will these young audiences but with an important difference - they will be observers, and in stepping back from the drama of their actual lives, they can see the inherent humor/pathos of all lives and gain perspective on choices they are making.