Inspiration from Goran Bregovic

This week our classes were inspired by a CD lent to me by my friend Edna.

"Welcome to Goran Bregovic" is a wonderful disc with a great range of rhythms, moods and tempos. His website www.goranbregovic.rs is gorgeous and has many more CDs of his music. Edna filled me in on her class which was, as usual, wonderful but of course I used some activities that suited then added my own.

The set up was a construction of square frames around the edge of the space that were windows looking into a snowy courtyard with white material as drifts of snow.

This is how the class went.

Task 1 Track 9 Looking through the windows making shapes, looking at friends in windows across courtyard.

Task 2 Track 7 Holding sleigh bells dancers follow rhythm 12 123 (good thing bells are so loud as lyrics are a bit dark!) up, down, side to side, holding shape 12 and moving 123, step, step, turn around etc.

Task 3 Track 6 Dancers make shapes of icicles in courtyard that melt into a puddle that shrinks as it evaporates. Dance to another place and start again.

Task 4 Track 8 Dancers throw white material snow balls watching where they land. How many ways of throwing- behind, though legs etc. Then trowing through windows and quickly throwing them out again.

Task 5 Track 18 Skiing all the movements of the down hill racers, slalom etc but accidents happen and falls in various ways are explored.

Task 6 Track 17 Apres Ski. Big party to finish with all the tricks of spins, cartwheels, leaps, twists and steps they can think of ending with a Conga Line out the door.

Another week of fun!

What fun activities did you explore this week? I would love to hear from you.

Building Villages

This week it seemed necessary to ignore the cold and wet weather outside and imagine ourselves in the in sunnier places. To inspire the class I set design materials of terra-cotta pots and chopsticks on the carpet. The idea was to build a village of houses and use this as a starting point for the class.

Depending on the age of the students we stamped on the ground to flatten the area creating a pattern of stamps, jumps and turns, adding straight and round shapes with arms, gathered imaginary fruit and vegetables from the forest with much stretching, placed potatoes on a camp fire (red scarves and chopstick with balls for potatoes), danced around the fire whilst the potatoes were "cooking" before taking them from the fire for a hot potato dance. Red, orange and yellow scarves were flames from the fire so dancers leapt, spun, twisted and turned through the room throwing the scarves and catching them. To cool down I said there was a river nearby with hippos slipping and rolling in the mud. This week they rolled out the door rather than jumping. Great fun!

The designs were fascinating and used a lot of balance which was explored in some groups. I am always looking for interesting and simple counter balances. If you have any ideas I would be very interested to hear from you.

Wee Willy Winky

How the week has flown! The classes had "Wee Willy Winky" as their theme this week. We started with Babushka Dolls on rugs with cushions as their door mats. Dancers wiped their feet before visiting each house. Then I took the dolls away and said that each family liked to do something that was very special. In one house it was jumping, in another it was making shapes, in another skipping and lastly it was spinning. As it was very cold dancers had to skate to each house. To test their memories I took the houses away and they had to remember where each movement activity was. After that each dancer held a star. The idea was that they had to follow the star through the night which lead to lovely explorations of levels. Dancers were then Willy Winkys running through the town down straight roads, turning sharply at corners, then stretching to rap on windows or crouching down to look through locks. They made streets of houses with windows and doors with their bodies that other dancers could look through. Lastly they danced over stars strewn on the floor to go out the door and put their shoes on. Fun! What did you do this week? Do you have classes that use Nursery Rhymes as inspiration. I would love to hear from you.

Mediavel Castle Fantasy

This week all the tasks were arranged around the idea of the Mediaeval Castle....the castle being of course in our imaginations. We looked through stained glass windows (hoops covered in cellophane as in the photo), created strange castle shapes with towers, arches, turrets and out-buildings by making joined shapes in a group; danced like Lords and Ladies showing off our beautiful, imaginary clothes; found ourselves in the tower having to send messages by painting in the air then painting on a partners back and watching them interpret the message by dancing it; deciding our message was not being seen and throwing the message (tulle gathered around a small ball and held with an elastic band) from the window. Finally we were free to dance in our own way at the end of the class before jumping out the door. Phew! It was wonderful to see the young dancers finding ways of moving from strong shapes, to flowing lyrical movement, to grand gestures and joyous free dance. I have a great job! What did you do this week in class? Was it something new or old favourites?

The holidays have begun

Inspite of a difficult week (see previous post) we had some great moments this week. The class had a lot of elements loosely attached to the theme of the garden. Birds in nests who loved to keep their homes clean with little brushes, cats, frogs, mysterious eggs which hatched strange creatures. Now to holidays and having the time to start thinking in detail about the performance in November.