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Dance at the Stone House
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 This season we developed a new site-specific work at the Sun Valley Youth Arts Center called Dance At the Stone House. Although all our programs are interactive, we had never done a work like this where 60 students would be both audience and dancers in a piece just 45 minutes long. To see many more photos and read more about this, click here to read on, or on the bar to the right under the Quick Links heading. We will be partnering with the Youth Arts Center again next fall and have openings for 4-6th graders on November 13, 2008. Contact us to participate and for additional to be announced dates. |
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Professional Development for Teachers
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 Our interactive training sessions for teachers offer substantial practical techniques in developing creative intelligence within their students including physical dance study, cultural, aesthetic, and historic appreciation, and subsequent integration into the rest of the curriculum using a model that depends on participatory education. The topics range from "Creating a Dance" with practical examples to others that are more concerned with the integration of dance into other curriculum areas. "Creating a Dance" allows teachers to put together a full dance in that same session. They incorporate techniques on how to use the elements of dance - space, time, and energy, within their own dance phrases. Other often requested PD sessions are "Weaving Dance Into the Curriculum", "Dance and Open Court", and "Using Specific Cultural Dances." Some of their evaluation comments tell the story. |
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Continuing Education: The Reality Series
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 Our new "The Reality Series" is being developed as an interactive dance/multimedia work based on parts of our lives that we often don't pay too much attention to. Developing both the work and an audience that is engaged in the process of creating a work like this falls under continuing education. It has been aided by a "Creating Public Value" grant from the CA Arts Council, the LA County Arts Commission, and the Department of Cultural Affairs, City of LA. The site-specific "Stone House" work was also part of "The Reality Series" but targeted to youth. In March at Alva's Performance Gallery in San Pedro members of the preview audience not only volunteered to participate in the interactive work "The Reality Series", but they also put together clues that shaped the actual dance - in real time. They also participated in discussions after the performances about how it felt to go on stage to participate ("intimidating at first, and then I loved it!). In "The Shampoo" an audience member has a simulated hair wash while the dancers explore the feelings and emotions a simple shampoo evokes. In "Los(t) Angeles" the entire audience rises to learn Korean classical arm movements with our dancer Sung-Yun. Others volunteer to learn a simple hip-hop combination with Anaja. In "Identity" audience members see copies of real emails Reichlin has received, see the dancers in shadow silhouettes and then all in full lights doing everyone's characteristic movements, and finally making choices on their identities. See more about this piece, which is both "continuing education" and great entertainment. For an online card about the May 10 performances at the Madrid Theatre in Canoga Park click here.
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to our very first E-NEWSLETTER. It is divided into two parts because we want to emphasize the two major areas that have been the center of our work this year. 
