Lincoln Center institute for the arts in education

In my post about Maxine Greene, I mentioned the Lincoln Center institute for the arts in education. During the summer of 2002 I participated in The National Educator Workshop: Introduction to Aesthetic Education. Everyday for the week of July 8 through 12, I trekked to New York City and spent my days at Lincoln Center. As a child growing up in the Long Island suburbs of the City, I had my fill of concerts, opera and ballet at Lincoln Center, but for that week in 2002 it was a treat to enter buildings that for years had seemed out of range to me as a theatre attendee. The location, and having access to these buildings that are home to artistic endeavors, made me feel artistically inclined; it was as though my surroundings could rub off on me and cause me to feel like an artist!

Wikipedia has some pictures of Lincoln Center’s buildings, and Carthalia contains a compilation of history about the buildings along with some postcard pictures of the complex. In fact, if you have an interest in old postcards or theatres and concert halls worldwide, you should check out Carthalia – Theatres on Postcards.

During the week long workshop I participated in activities designed to expose me to the sensations of aesthetic education. There were hands-on art workshops, hands-on music workshops, attendance at a concert, a visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and attendance at a dance performance. There was also a lecture by Maxine Greene, which was one of the many highlights of the week. I was immersed in the arts, and loved every minute of the process!

Throughout the week each of us (there were about 40, if memory serves correct) were encouraged to keep a journal. After the workshop concluded, we were asked to submit a Response Essay about the week long experience. In addition to various handouts provided during the workshop, we were also given a booklet entitled Entering the World of the Work of Art – A Brainstorming Guide. The booklet’s purpose was to guide us in bringing art into the world of education, particularly as a way of expanding imagination. From the booklet:

“At Lincoln Center we believe that works of art provide an inexhaustible resource for exploration, reflection, and understanding. Children and adults have the capacity to respond to a work of art in ways that can stimulate fresh insights, encourage deeper understandings, and challenge preconceived notions. Without the limitations imposed by “right” or “wrong” answers, the process of responding to a work of art develops each student’s ability to think in fundamental and powerful ways.”

“As a result, unexpected connections are made, alternative points of view considered, complexities explored, and doors to new and imagined worlds opened.”

To read more about this experiential program, first visit the Lincoln Center page and then scroll down to the lower right corner, under Arts and Education, and click the link for Lincoln Center Institute.

The Pajama Game has been put to bed.

Alas, we have opened and closed, happily to thunderous applause and standing ovations. Well, what else would you expect from an audience of family, students and friends, and a musical that has some rousing songs, active staging and two great dances (Steam Heat and Hernando’s Hideaway), and of course some good acting to boot!

My regular posts will resume this week, but I wanted to mark the wonderful time I had in this production by sharing two more photos with you. The first is a backstage shot of three factory workers (I’m the one on the right). The second is the closing moments of Hernando’s Hideaway, and I’m the one in green.

Forecast this week includes two days in the 60s. While we may yet have some cold and damp weather, spring is on its way. Olé!

p.s. Those five satin dresses were made by a Math teacher in our upper school. One of the students took a picture of the five of us and I’ll be sure to share it in a future post. Satin dresses accompanied by heels sure did a lot to set the mood for our  tango dancing!

The Pajama Game

It may get a little quiet here for the next week or so. I’m having a blast being in the student~faculty musical at my school. This is a 30+ year tradition that brings together upper schoolers (grades 9–12) and faculty in the production of musical theatre. I’ve been in The Boys From Syracuse, Fiddler On the Roof, My Fair Lady, and now The Pajama Game.

We open on Friday, February 29th, and close the next evening on Saturday, March 1st. Definitely a limited engagement. Starting tomorrow night (Thursday the 21st) we have rehearsals every evening except for this Friday and Saturday.

That’s me and a student doing a “fin de leap frog” (not sure what that is, leave me a comment and I’ll get back to you) as part of the picnic scene for “Once A Year Day”. The musical is definitely a bit corny, absolutely dated, but nonetheless lots of fun.

Oh yes, and it’s also a wonderful test of visual memory, spatial memory, and kinesthetic memory as I learn lines (all two of them ), staging, and dances. Am actually rather pumped to be one of the dancers in “Hernando’s Hideaway”. By the way, the original musical was staged on Broadway the year I was born. Now go figure out how old I am!

Creative Footsteps.2

Movement, in general, and dance, in particular, is very healthy for our bodies and our minds. Indeed, just take a look at young children and you will often see them in some type of motion. Somewhere along the line we manage to educate the movement out of the bodies, to paraphrase Ken Robinson (whose talk you can see below). Well, undoubtedly you are sitting while reading this, but perhaps some of the places below will move you to movement!

~ Free to Dance, Public Television’s Great Performances “three-part documentary that chronicles the crucial role that African-American choreographers and dancers have played in the development of modern dance as an American art form.”

~ The Center for Educator Development in Fine Arts includes a section on teaching dance – explore the site using various links on the left and discover seemingly obvious pearls of wisdom like this, which I think is applicable to every educator in any field: “Dance teachers who actively explore and develop their own ideas of what it means to be creative will, in turn, model their beliefs and practices for their students.”

~ Child & Family CANADA’s article: Creative Movement and Dance in Early Childhood Education. This quote from the site says it all when it comes to kids of any age and physical movment: “Rudolph Laban, considered the founder of movement and dance education, stated in his book Modern Educational Dance (194 that educators need to guide children’s natural urge to dance-like movement and preserve their movement spontaneity into adult life.”

~ Sudden Focus on Organizational Creativity: Seniors Dance out of the Box! – an amusing article about sports teams and half-time entertainment, proving one is never too old to shake, rattle and roll (and it’s probably very good for those who are doing so!) (Ah, had but the article included more about the health benefits, both physical and cognitive, for seniors…)

~ The Dance of Creativity – Mark Morris – portions of an interview from the Harvard Business Review.” Some snippets from Morris: …it’s important to distinguish between creativity and art. … The most common form of creativity is problem solving … By contrast, art depends upon whether you can invent something from very little.”

Creative Footsteps

Judith Jamison is the artistic director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, and I saw my first performance ever of this high-energy troupe just this past Thursday evening. The program included Night Creature (a jubilant homage to the music of the same name by Duke Ellington), Urban Folk Dance (a tale of two couples confined by their surroundings), The Golden Section (choreographed by Twyla Tharp), and the amazing Revelations (a signature piece that chronicles the spirituality of African Americans).

I so thoroughly enjoyed the performance – the boundless energy, grace and athleticism; the floating, leaping, shimmying, wiggling, slinking, jumping, bending; the passionate love for what they were doing displayed by the dancer’s bodies and on their faces.

Twyla Tharp, the choreographer of The Golden Section, discusses creativity in the video clip below. She is also the author of The Creative Habit: Learn it and Use It for Life (which I have not read).

There is more to this post, but it seemed a bit long so I have split it into two, and you can read the next part in my next post.