February 2010 Summer Camp Ideas
kanga news
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Abington Friends School
High Enrollment Interest Pirates of Penzance Middle School Athletics Physics First MLK Day of Service Annual Fund Progress February Calendar
Connection and Engagement Through the Arts Message from Rich Nourie, Head of School What a blessing we have in the arts! They transform everyday experience and draw us into a different layer of meaning and possibility. They engage our senses, our emotions, our minds and spirits. They renew us and challenge us, comfort and confront us. The arts show the extraordinary range of languages of which we are capable as human beings: music, images, the words of prose and poetry alike, movement, theater, myth, film, sculpture and more. They both create and mirror a richness of experience and our very existence that is so wide as to be hard to comprehend.
ave the date
On February 10, our entire community will encounter an explosion of art experiences as we celebrate Women in the Arts Day, the latest collaboration in community and art from our Arts Department, which has already delighted and inspired us in recent years with Mozart Day and Diego Rivera Day. This year’s theme celebrates women in the arts with “the intention to provide more curricular depth and understanding around the theme of extraordinary work that women have done in the face of cultural restrictions, care giving and social boundaries” in the words of Arts Department coordinator, Debbie Pizzi.
February 2 LS Winter Spirit Day H&S Meeting
February 4 Community Care Committee Meeting
February 5-6 Used Book Sale
February 6 Community Talent Show
February 10 Women in the Arts
Our Arts Department has developed a distinct vision of the arts in the context of community. In creations such as last year’s Spring Puppet Pageant and the previous arts days, the arts faculty has used our whole campus as a venue for arts experiences that draw children and adults into interactive lessons, exhibits and performances. In the midst of dreary winter, our arts days have created celebrations of connection, with each other and with engaging ideas. This year’s Women in the Arts Day promises an adventurous and joyful day, with visiting artists, exhibits, opportunities to make and share art in spaces and classrooms all over campus. We will welcome the Kulu Mele African Dance and Drum Ensemble, a nationally known force behind a vital African cultural renaissance in Philadelphia, in the Muller Auditorium. We’ll be visited and taught by Pamela Hooks, a film-maker whose work includes a recent documentary on Kulu Mele, Bobbi Block, a theater artist who will teach improvisation and body percussion throughout the day, and Mia Johnson, an accomplished singer/songwriter who will be performing during all the lunch periods in the Muller Cafeteria. (continued on next page)