| Saturday Professional Development Workshops in Arts Education at the Music Center 2007-2008
The Music Center is offering a series of workshops for school teams and educators interested in building skills and integrating the arts into their classrooms. The professional development workshops will be held from the end of October, 2007 through April, 2008. They feature hands-on workshops that link to the summer Institute themes from Maya Angelou's poem, "On the Pulse of Morning" and American Ballet Theatre's performance of the story ballet, "The Sleeping Beauty". Institute participants and additional educators from their schools are qualified to attend these workshops at no charge. However, enrolment is limited, so you must register to attend.
Teachers from schools outside of the NEA and San Gabriel Valley grant projects are also invited to attend these workshops. The non-grant participant fee for each session is $50. The fee is payable by check or credit card.
| 2007 - 2008 PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT WORKSHOPS | |
Four-hour Session with Dawn Dyson - From Sleeping Beauty to Barnacle Bill
Saturday, October 27, 2007, Music Center / Dorothy Chandler Pavilion Rehearsal Room 4, 9AM - 1PM
Dawn Dyson will lead participants through hands-on dance activities that relate classical story ballet to traditional American square dance in her From Sleeping Beauty to Barnacle Bill workshop. Through her inclusive and accessible approach, Dawn deconstructs dances into simple, easy-to-learn segments that allow teachers to feel comfortable and confident in their abilities to dance and to present the material to their students. Teachers will not only be able to break dances down into teachable segments, but will also learn how to add creative exercises to lessons and make connections to classroom curriculum. This workshop will also use materials from American Ballet Theatre's The Sleeping Beauty Artsource unit to compare and contrast ballet and square dance while learning about dancer etiquette, tempo change, leading and following, sequence structure and re-staging.
Four-hour Session with Kathryn Schwartz - Settings and Scenes
Saturday, November 17, 2007, Music Center / Dorothy Chandler Pavilion Rehearsal Room 4, 9AM - 1PM
Teachers will learn how to guide students in the creation of settings and characters drawn from the imagery of On the Pulse of Morning by Maya Angelou, and as they create, rehearse and perform scenes and/or short plays. Using the Rock, River and/or Tree and the biomes they represent, teachers will explore how to employ improvisation to create communities of true-to-life or fantasy characters who live and thrive within those settings. Participants will then identify and expand a life-changing conflict that threatens the existence of their world, which the characters must work together to confront and defeat. After improvising and scripting scenes, each group will rehearse and present their dramatic efforts to the rest of the participants. Elements of theatre and literature explored will include dialogue, monologue, playwriting, conflict, setting, plot, action, point of view, rising action, complications, suspense and character development.
Four-hour Session with Aimee Hopkins - Down by the Riverside: An Exploration of Vocal Music for Classroom Teachers
Saturday, January 26, 2008, Music Center / Dorothy Chandler Pavilion Rehearsal Room 4, 9AM - 1PM
This workshop will use Maya Angelou's monumental poem, "On the Pulse of Morning," as a springboard into Vocal Music. We will explore songs tied to the 3 symbols in the poem - the Rock, River and Tree, including "I Am a Rock" by Simon & Garfunkel; "The River" by Garth Brooks, "The River" by Maury Yeston, "Down by the Riverside," an African-American Spiritual; and "We Shall Not Be Moved," an African-American Spiritual. Goals for teacher learning include (1) learning to sing and speak in front of students and others with poised confidence and proper technique; (2) obtaining and refining the ability to guide students through vocal music exercises to develop their music literacy; and (3) digging deep within themselves and their own creativity to develop works of musical art based on an anchor work, even with little or no prior musical experience. The session will concentrate on musical ideas such as breath control, duration or notes (long/short), steady beat, pitch (high/low), dynamics (loud/soft), articulation (legato/staccato), rehearsal and performance. Whether you have a great deal of musical education or none at all, this four-hour Saturday workshop will give you easy, fun, hands-on curriculum ideas to instruct your students in Vocal Music, even if you are not a singer!
Four-hour Session with Maire Clerkin - The Sleeping Beauty - Told through Irish Dance Drama
Saturday, March 15, 2008, Music Center / Dorothy Chandler Pavilion Rehearsal Room 4, 9AM - 1PM
Using American Ballet Theatre's production of The Sleeping Beauty as a starting point, Maire Clerkin will show teachers how they can adapt this anchor work to create classroom theatre by combining it with Irish Dance. Replacing ABT's classical ballet with traditional Irish dancing, teachers will learn basic traveling steps Promenade and Sidestep, and be taught Ceili (or group) dance movements such as The Chain, Wheel, Thread the Needle and Arches. These formation dances can interpret ensemble scenes from the folk tale e.g. conflict, meeting and greeting, transformation. Participants will also experience a series of improvisation exercises to create characters. These include gesture and posture, dance-freeze games and tableaux. Each segment comes in bite size chunks: fun, accessible and stimulating. Participants are given the opportunity to discuss the storyline, explore drama dynamics and examine ways to make this famous work of art more contemporary and relevant.
Four-hour Session with Rob Bowers - From the Page to the Stage in Musical Theatre
Saturday, April 26, 2008, Music Center / Dorothy Chandler Pavilion Rehearsal Room 4, 9AM - 1PM
Theatre and Music have been interconnected art forms since their beginnings, and yet we sometimes separate them from one another. In this workshop, Rob Bowers will highlight basic presentational techniques and bring them to life as a means to rethink and redesign strategies to make words, music, singing, movement, props, scenery, and staging become more fun and accessible. Each part of this workshop focuses on a section of the anchor work poem, Maya Angelou's On the Pulse of Morning. Participants will explore and interpret its intent and meanings, and then use it as a springboard to anchor NEW ideas about its essence. The concept of a "Family Tree" bring us into songs and skits about immigrants; elements of satire and humor are directed at "attitude" and "wastefulness," using songs like "I Won't Grow Up" (from "Peter Pan") and Tom Lehrer's "Pollution"; the power of a River is connected with interesting Asian and Western theatre techniques and music from "Big River".
EVENTS
For questions about the Professional Development Workshops,
please contact Shannon Howard at (213) 972-3377.
Please download the Registration Form (1 page, Word Doc, 88KB) and return the filled-out form to:
Music Center Education and Family Programs
135 North Grand Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90012
ATTN: Professional Development
is proud to sponsor professional development programs at the Music Center.
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