Today was absolutely incredible on so many levels. In a past life I used to run a performing arts company that encouraged young people to use art, in particular dance/movement, to inspire dialogue that encouraged positive community change. I haven’t felt so much love, inspiration, commitment and passion in one space in years. Going into today’s lesson I had no idea how moved all of us would be by the incredible work these young artist created.  I left today feeling excited and inspired by every single one of these students, they are absolutely incredible.

Today we focused on look applying scene analysis techniques to movement to more deeply enrich storytelling. We also looked at how we can use musical phrasing to manipulate and emphasize particular moments. Being able to embody a story/song with your full body is so crucial in generating interesting and engaging ensemble work and really takes scene and song analysis to the next level. Using the exact same formula in small groups students were tasked with creating an original story and movement piece idea inspired by Waiving Through A Window. The formula the students used (a series of tableau’s, structure improv) can be easily applied to any ensemble scene to create an authentic and realistic world- aka not everyone is doing the exact same thing/generically standing around. As you watch the videos keep in mind that these pieces were created in 20 minutes. Seriously, 20 minutes. After students created their original pieces we used this formula to create the movement for “Quiet”.

Enough from me. Check out the videos below to see a few examples of the work these students created. To see all the pieces, watch our playlist on our Facebook page.

BIG SHOUT OUT to Izzy Mergen, Ally Socha, Asha Opal, Carissa Tobalsky, Natalie Levy and Miranda Schotz… thank you so much for all your help today! Wouldn’t have been possible without you (and your willingness to test out the lesson).

-Lindsay Kujawa