daCi USA Newsletter - Spring 2023

daCi USA Newsletter

Dance and the Child International | USA Chapter

DACI USA GATHERING

Get news about the daCi USA Gathering in Holland, Michigan, from Nicki Flinn, the 7th National Gathering Chair.

DANCE

SEL CORNER P. 7

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Chair's Message

Dear daCi USA members,

The sweet smell of spring is in the air and with it comes an appreciation of all that is new and revitalized. As I share my final chair’s message I’m experiencing a special enthusiasm for all the new and revitalized work the 202023 board has accomplished. It is an exciting time to be a daCi USA member!

The Youth Leadership Training initiative is bringing young people from all over the country together to learn and share.

The new format for both the biannual newsletter and monthly daCi Delights continues to provide motivating perspectives and class plans and now informs on important advocacy and international initiatives to keep us current, relevant, and engaged.

Our website and social media platforms keep us connected with ways to celebrate the power of dance both nationally and internationally.

The Annual daCi USA Day of Dance brings us together virtually to dance, create, connect, and celebrate National Dance Day.

The revision of the by-laws focused on current practices and created a new family category in group membership.

And it is a Gathering year! This year’s event, “Anchored in Hope: Expanding Horizons,” on the beautiful campus of Hope College in Holland, MI will be a special one. It will be he first opportunity to dance together in six years, plus we are celebrating 25 years of the daCi USA chapter! At this Gathering we will engage in special ways to reaffirm our vision of dance for all children, embody the unique opportunity for intergenerational connection and collaboration, and celebrate the power of dance to change the world. I hope you can attend to dance and celebrate with our amazing daCi USA family!

I would like to acknowledge the talents and dedication of board members Heather Francis, Carol Day, Deborah Lipa-Ciotta, Nicki Flinn, Mady Cantor, Chris Roberts, Chara Huckins, Cally Flox, Kathryn Austin, Vincent E. Thomas, Amy Munro Lang-Crow, Sara Malan-McDonald, and Jennifer Florey. It was an honor to lead this group, and I am grateful to share my passion for dance in the daCi way with each of these remarkable individuals and all of you.

Warmly,

Joy Guarino

Letter from the Editor

Greetings!

I am delighted to share this newsletter full of ideas, perspectives, and tips from all over the daCisphere.

We have, from Tennessee, Liz Borromeo’s insights into teaching creative dance to people in an addiction recovery facility. Rachel Swenson from Idaho shares her expertise in teaching dance within a social-emotional learning framework. The member spotlight focuses on Jessie Levey from New York, and members from Massachusetts and Washington share their field-tested lesson plans. The Recommendation Zone is a crowd-sourced compilation of interesting and useful resources.

Many thanks to all the newsletter contributors and the dream team of Heather Francis and Hanna Gemperline who handled the visual design.

Our BIG daCi news is that the triennial National Gathering is..…..gathering steam! The 2020 Gathering was cancelled due to the pandemic and we have a lot of pent up energy and interest in the plans for this July in Holland, Michigan. There will be classes, workshops, and performances. The place will be teeming with creative energy; master teachers will abound! Several hundred dancers and dance educators will participate in this one-ofa-kind multi-generational,

collaborative, creative event. See the “Dispatch” from Nicki Flinn, the chair of the Gathering, who is leading a rockin’ effort for a terrific experience.

For those who like to look even further ahead, here is some news from the international daCi organization: the 2024 international conference will be held in Ljubljana, Slovenia, July 7-12, 2024. The theme is “I-Body, I-Dance ” and the conference hosts have created a trailer about it.

Dance on!

Mady Cantor Editor

Mady, off to Michigan!

NATIONAL DACI GATHERING

Lots to share as we slide, leap, jump and gallop ahead on the plans for the daCi USA Gathering in July at Hope College in Holland, Michigan! Registrations are coming in at a steady pace, from all over the country. We will have first-timers and daCi veterans, students at all levels, and dance educators with a wide range of perspectives. We will range in age from 7 to 70. The multi-generational and creative elements in the Gathering are what make daCi unique and special.

We have assembled an extraordinary group of dance educators who will inspire and enrich our movement experiences. Youth dance companies are preparing to perform; the Michigan folks will share their dance cultures; we will get to develop new skills and step into dances from other parts of the world. And that’s just what’s happening inside the dance studios and theaters! Theater

Dispatch from Nicki Flinn, Gathering Chair

One of the spacious studios at Hope College

Outside the dance spaces, the excellent dining hall offers a chance to make new connections (as well as eat and relax, of course). And who knows …..maybe there will be evening dance jams in the dorm living rooms!

Off the campus and within a short walking distance, we can take advantage of Holland’s vibrant downtown which includes street performers, great restaurants, fro yo, boba tea and fun and interesting shops. And an easy drive away are the shores of picturesque Lake Michigan.

Hope to see you at Hope!

Dining Center

Street Performer

Street Performers in Holland

DANCING WITH THE GUYS AT MAGNOLIA RIDGE

Creative Dance in Addiction Recovery

By Liz Borromeo

In July of 2022 I moved from Vancouver, WA to Johnson City, TN where I have family and the need to be close and supportive of them. I handed over my dance studio space in Washington to rising dance education leaders there and have started from scratch here in NE Tennessee. I’ve continued to work remotely with MOTUS, my youth dance company in Vancouver, via Zoom.

A new Tennessee friend heard me chatting about creative dance and the braincompatible approach, and she told me that she worked in the recovery program at Magnolia Ridge. She was really interested in hearing more about this way of teaching and learning. I had been pounding the pavement at various studios and organizations and I was excited about the possibility of getting to share dance with folks who I hoped would benefit in so many ways from experiencing it.

My sessions started in October. I have a group of 20-25 men for an hour on Fridays. Magnolia Ridge is designed for short-term treatment with the hope that the men continue their recovery outside of the residential situation. I sometimes see participants a few times but often I work with a brand new group every time.

Each Friday, the guys start with good bit of hesitancy and a little bit of curiosity. They often try to “test” me a bit to see if I can be trusted. This is a group of people who have had hard lives for many reasons. Usually they have suffered from abuse or other traumas, they have destroyed their bodies with drugs and alcohol, they have been judged harshly for their appearance, life choices and more, and they are struggling so much to find their way. I pretty much dive into the dancing with them right after I’m introduced. Smiles and laughter are two of my biggest tools!

Located in northeast Tennessee, Magnolia Ridge Unit at Turning Point is a treatment facility with 48 residential treatment beds serving males over the age of 18 with addiction and co-occurring mental health needs. It offers a multi-disciplinary approach, using evidence-based practices to move individuals toward recovery.

Just as I would do with my dancers in the studio, we do a BrainDance and then I run through a concept-based Creative Dance lesson plan, adapted from the work of Anne Green Gilbert. Usually within the first five minutes or so, they are smiling, dancing, making choices, solving problems.

We have done dance activities that may be familiar to dance educators such as Shape Fences, Movement Telephone, and Half an Instrument. We have also had some special sessions incorporating ballet pantomime and they seemed to enjoy the dramatic moments in that.

Typically, a handful of the guys do not participate, and, as I do in studio classes with hesitant dancers, I offer the chance to join in with each different activity. If we use props, I always give the guys on the sidelines a prop. When we share choreography they become our audience. I often catch them watching attentively and sometimes the more hesitant guys join in after observing for a bit.

They love doing folk dances! We did Mayim, Los Machetes, and Heel/Toe Polka and some reels. I’ve also been super pleased to see how well they've done with the choreography “assignments” in class.

Last week they created group dances around movement maps, and their work was

awesome. They get to work together, share ideas, create, see a project to its conclusion, reflect on their experience...all applicable to life outside rehab.

The guys surprise themselves with what they can do and create in our sessions. I usually get a few minutes to chat with them after we’re done, and some of their observations are that they feel loose and well-exercised, less anxious, more grounded, happy. I have shared a copy of the BrainDance patterns with pictures and explanations, which allows them to keep practicing it on their own.

Feedback from the staff at Magnolia Ridge has been great. The guys do a lot of journaling on all their weekly activities, and the dance sessions have been well-received. Sometimes the support staff at Magnolia Ridge participates in the sessions, and they seem to enjoy the dancing too!

One encouraging thing happened in late October. My church does a ‘trunk or treat’ for Halloween, and as folks came by my trunk, a guy was with his family and recognized me as “the dance lady”! He had made it through the program and was doing well in his recovery. I’d very much like to bring Creative Dance to other area programs. I think this population is very much in need of it.

Liz Borromeo has been a dance educator and choreographer for 25+ years, working with students of all ages in private dance studios, arts organizations, public schools and a variety of other community settings She is the founding director of the dance community in Vancouver, WA that is now called "Cottage Dance Academy" (est. 2015 as Liz Borromeo Dance) and also directs MOTUS Dance Company (est. 2016). Recently relocated to a new community in NE Tennessee, she continues to work with MOTUS remotely and she is excited to share her passion for the art of dance and the learning process with local dancers in her new home and others in varied settings such as ministry programs and persons in addiction recovery.

Relationship Skills

Social-Emotional Learning in the Dance Classroom

By Rachel Swenson

Editor’s note: This is the second offering in our SEL series. daCi member Rachel Swenson has been researching SEL as a doctoral student at Teachers College and uses it as a pedagogical framework in her work as a dance educator in Idaho. Each column focuses on one of the five domains in SEL.

Dance education is a powerful tool for promoting social-emotional learning. SocialEmotional Learning (SEL) is an approach to teaching and learning that centers “recognizing and managing one’s emotions, developing caring and concern for others, establishing positive relationships, making responsible decisions, and handling challenging situations constructively and ethically.” The five social and emotional competency domains are self-awareness, selfmanagement, social awareness, responsible decision-making, and…..relationship skills, which is the topic of this column and a perfect fit for dance education.

What are relationship skills, exactly? The Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL), a leading organization in the field, defines relationship skills as the “abilities to establish and maintain healthy and supportive relationships and to effectively navigate settings with diverse individuals and groups”

Thinking about teaching through the perspective of relationship skill-building can be a useful and constructive exercise. What interpersonal skills can students learn in our dance classes?

Dancemaking as a collaborative process is at the heart of my dance curriculum so relationship skills are built in and developed from the start. The projects typically involve groups of three to seven who work together for two to six weeks.

The projects are wide-ranging in content. They might be prompted by researching a current or historical choreographer, school theme (Unity, Creativity, Respect, Expression, Acceptance, Trust, Excellence), artwork, poetry, props, social justice themes, or student journal writing. The content is then explored through improvisational play. Often these small group projects are expanded into full-class dances, with small group sections within them. All projects lead to theatrical performances.

Some of the students mentioned that having time to get to know each other before starting to work together was crucial for building a positive community. This suggests the importance of ice breakers and social introductions at the start, and building ongoing practices of feedback and support into the class. Some activities and practices I use to promote this include:

partner mirror warmups

peer-led flocking warmups

silent movement conversations as a warmup

peer partners giving constructive and positive feedback after watching each other in class

Secret Sunshine Friend (small gestures made to a dance peer to show appreciation, such as a poem or sweet treat) positive word or phrase about a peer written on a sticky note and placed on them.

Through active listening, one can show the person that is speaking to you that you care about what they are saying while also absorbing important information from the speaker. Another positive relationship skill I was reminded of was the power of assisting teammates. Everyone gets confused sometimes and having someone there to help you with the choreography, or

After each choreographic activity I asked the students to name and describe their burgeoning relationship skills. I see the positive results of this SEL approach reflected in their own words:

When you listen to other people’s choreographic ideas, the dance can become a lot better and more interesting.

I also listened to other people's ideas and spoke up for them when others weren’t listening to their ideas.

Another thing I learned is that making sure your dancers are having fun in the process of creating choreography is key to having them connect in a deeper level of understanding.

There were multiple occasions where the dancers had to work together to create new phrases from the original phrase we learned. This is helpful for learning how to collaborate and listen to other dancers.

Talking to others as you work on the dance and sharing ideas can make the dance easier and quicker without people fighting and getting mad.

In general, the positive and inclusive atmosphere fostered by the SEL approach was a source of surprise and delight for me as the teacher. I highly recommend trying it!

WORK CITED: CASEL. (2022). What is the CASEL Framework? Referenced from https://casel.org/fundamentals-of-sel/what-is-thecasel-framework/#relationship

Rachel Swenson is a dance specialist at Idaho Fine Arts Academy and a dance teaching artist for the Idaho Commission of the Arts and the Utah Arts Council. She is pursuing an Interdisciplinary specialization as a doctoral candidate in the Ed.D. Dance Education Program at Teachers College, Columbia University Her research interests include social-emotional learning and social processes in collaborative choreography, and cognitive processes in creativity, as well as other areas.

Member Spotlight

JESSIE

LEVEY

by Chara Huckins, daCi USA Member Liaison

Jessie Levey grew up in New York City, with a dancer mother who took her along to dance rehearsals and performances. Her mom toured a lot when Jessie was young. Jessie’s first formal dance classes were at Margaret Craske’s Manhattan School of Dance, followed by the 92nd Street Y and then the Merce Cunningham and Ruth Currier Studios. She attended Walden High School where the arts were part of the school curriculum, allowing her to dance four days a week during the school day, in addition to her after-school classes. She started teaching dance while still in high school, working as an assistant teacher for younger students. After high school she attended Sarah Lawrence College where she earned a BA in Liberal Arts with a Concentration in Dance.

After college, she danced with a number of downtown dance companies in New York. She particularly loved the five years she spent working with choreographer Dani Nikas and the process of diving deeply into the meaning of the work. Later, she and her husband made a big decision to move out of New York City to the country. They decided on West Park, a small town 80 miles north of New York City in the Hudson Valley. In describing this transition Jessie said, “you have to live your life, and not let it slip by.”

Twenty years ago, she did just that by buying a house with a separate building on the property. This became Barefoot Dance Center. She started by offering creative and modern dance classes, later adding choreography, dances of the African diaspora, ballet, and yoga. The program now includes two youth

Photo Credit: George Swain

performance groups. She addresses the challenge of providing wide-ranging dance perspectives and experiences by bringing in guest artists and choreographers. Another challenge is trying to maintain student numbers in a small town. This was especially true during the Covid pandemic where she had to find new ways to engage her students.

Jessie decided to continue her learning trajectory and went back to school, at the same time her kids were in college. She received an, MFA in dance from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 2017. When asked to reflect on her path, Jessie says that her “love for dance comes from a magical sense of flow that happens when your mind and body connect. It is akin to a spiritual connection.”

She also noted that women tend to underestimate their accomplishments. Starting a school and holding fast to her core educational beliefs is an accomplishment. She wants children to learn in healthy ways, and considers every child who passes through her

dance studio an artist from the moment they arrive. She is proud to be able to say, “My students feel prepared when they go to college dance programs because they have had the technical and performance background and the creative piece. They know how to improvise, they know how to choreograph and they know how to think compositionally.”

Jessie discovered daCi through Anna Mansbridge, director of Kaleidoscope Dance Company in Seattle and longtime daCi member. She and Anna created a collaborative dance work over Zoom near the beginning of the Covid pandemic, joining their two youth companies. An account of their fruitful collaboration is on the Barefoot Dance Center website here.

Meanwhile, Jessie is thinking about going to the National Gathering this summer, and is definitely hoping to get more involved in daCi and connect with like-minded dance educators.

Barefoot Dance Company in performance

LEVEL AND THE NATURAL WORLD

Author: Bri Wilson, Creative Dance Center, Seattle, WA

Age group: 4th and 5th grades

Length of Lesson: 1 hour

Warm-Up (Teacher-directed)

Brain Dance

Seated on a low level: Breath, Tactile, Core-Distal, Head-Tail

Standing on a high level: Upper-Lower, Body-Side, CrossLateral, Vestibular

Suggested Music: “Perpetual” by Peter Jones

Introduce the Concept: “See, say, hear, and do”

Low Level: below hips

Middle Level: between hips and armpits

High Level: above armpits

Low level occurs close to the ground, underneath your hips. Now rise up a little higher to a middle level, in the space between your hips and armpits. Your knees have to bend a lot, and your spine may be bent forward. Now rise up even more to a high level, and try to fit as many body parts as you can in the space above your armpits. Varying levels in a dance mimics the rise and fall of a natural landscape: low level is like a valley, middle level is like foothills, and high level is like mountains. What other natural landscapes can you think of that have a clear level?

Reference: Creative Dance for All Ages, 2nd Ed. pp. 125-138

Exploring the Concept (Student-centered)

Mountain Loop Highway Improvisation Score (inspired by a popular road trip in Washington State can be adapted for any geographic area and natural environment)

Let’s begin on a low level. Imagine that your body is a luscious valley, filled with rustling grass. How does that inspire you to move? As we rise up to a middle level, imagine that your body is the rounded foothills at the base of the Cascade Mountains. How do the foothills inspire you to move? At last we’re reaching up to a high level, imagining that our bodies are the sharp, jagged peaks of the North Cascades. How does that image inspire you to move?

Optional Prop: scarf

Suggested Music: “September Song” by Agnes Obel

Reflection: make a shape on the level that you enjoyed the most. Look around and see who is like you, and who is different from you. We’re making a landscape all together!

Photo credit: Devin Muñoz

Shaping: Seesaws

Seesaws can be natural or man-made. Let’s explore making shapes on the opposite level as our partner. The leader will make a shape on a high level. The follower will copy that shape, but on a low level The leader will decide when to change shapes, moving slowly so that the follower can copy them. On the teacher’s cue, both dancers will improvise through general space on the same level as their last shape, then return to each other and switch roles. After three rounds, find a new partner.

Reflection: Tell your partner which role was more challenging for you creating the shape, or copying the shape on the opposite level and why.

Suggested Music: “Fern” by Zoë Keating

Developing Skills (Teacher-directed)

Technique warm-up

Pliés in parallel first, parallel second, turned out first, and turned out second Prances and tendus in parallel and turned out, en croix Swings in sagittal, vertical, and horizontal planes

Combining movements with an ABC structure

Dancers start scattered.

A: two sets of eight counts of triplets in any direction traveling through general space

two sets of eight counts of sagittal drop swings in self space

two sets of eight counts of skips to a partner

B: two sets of eight counts of seesaw shapes, changing every 4 counts

C: two sets of eight counts of any level improvisation

Repeat until the music finishes.

Suggested Music: “Pitseleh” by Portland Cello Project

Creating: Plant Life (Student-centered)

In groups of three or four, students collaborate to create a dance that represents the life cycle of a plant. Dances will start on a low level with the planting of a seed, and rise in level as the seed bursts out of the soil and grows into a plant. They may also incorporate the germination and spread of seeds, to start the cycle again, as represented by traveling through general space on multiple levels. What obstacles stand in the way of a plant growing? How might the weather of the plant’s environment help or hinder its growth? How can the dancers’ bodies represent the parts of whichever plant they choose? Groups perform one at a time, and observing groups share what they enjoyed about each dance.

Cool Down

In a circle, dancers review Level with the “Say, See, Hear, Do” model Then the teacher cues one collective deep breath, and passes a clap around the circle, encouraging students to change the level of the clap as it comes to them. They finish with one collective clap.

Bri Wilson is a dance teaching artist based in Seattle, Washington. Originally from Michigan, she holds a BFA in Dance from the LINES Ballet BFA program. She joined Creative Dance Center faculty in 2020 to teach ages 3.5 and up in Creative Dance, Ballet, and Modern, and has acted as rehearsal assistant for Kaleidoscope Dance Company since 2022.

SHAPE: A MULTI-CLASS UNIT FOR YOUNG CHILDREN

Author: Jeanne Traxler, Boston, MA

Age Group: PK - 1st grade

Length of lesson: 45 minutes, multiple classes

Every class begins with a warm-up of several exercises, on the floor and standing, followed by two activity songs, enhanced with concepts from previous lessons: self/general space, ‘fancy’ body parts, etc. About the week four I begin teaching the concept of SHAPE to my PK-1st graders.

Lesson I. Geometric Shapes

Prop: Large paper with various geometric shapes

Intro: I show the paper with basic geometric shapes drawn on it and tell children what I made the picture out of (paper, markers) and say that dancers make shapes when they dance. What do we make them out of? Our bodies.

Try with your body parts:

straight line with a finger, an arm, a leg, whole self x/cross/plus with finger, hands, arms, legs, whole self

circle with fingers, hands, arms, legs arc with arms, whole self

For cross, triangle, square, I ask them to try with friends; with younger kids the teachers have to help. Then back to solo shapes for star, heart, and ‘messy line’ (or ‘scribbly line’). Sometimes we don’t do all of the shapes. It can get long with all of the parts.

This can end with any kind of “Freeze dance.” Sometimes I will hold up the shape cards to let them know which shape to make.

Music suggestion: Rock and Stop by Eric Chappelle

Lesson 2: Shape Creation

These activities sometimes take a few classes.

Props: Modeling clay/playdough; pictures from museum websites and brochures. Photos from the Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden in DC and work by sculptors Joel Shapiro and Jeff Koons are useful.

After the warm-up, I get out a piece of modeling clay or playdough and roll it into a ball. I ask them to identify and then make that shape Then I roll the clay into a snake and ask them to identify and make that shape with their whole self. Then, I ask if the clay will turn back into a ball. They usually say “no”, but a sizable group typically says “yes.” We experiment with that idea: we wait; we say magic words. (I make funny faces when it doesn’t change -- this has gotten a laugh since 1976!) Obvi, the clay never changes on its own. Why doesn’t it change – because there is no magic, they sometimes say, and most important: clay is not alive, so it can’t move itself. (We sometimes digress into what is alive and can grow and change: plants, animals, people. Not rocks or other things.) I make the clay into several shapes as they try them.

Then we play the sculptor/ clay game. My assistant is a lump of clay and I build them into a brand new shape. They hold the shape, we applaud. My assistant builds me into a shape. I hold the shape, they applaud. Music: any sort of quiet music.

Then what I do with the age groups diverges:

PK – the teachers build the students. Then the students build the teachers. (They love this) Reminders to be gentle and not knock anyone over! We repeat with the teachers building and then skipping around the shapes, walking, etc. Then the children build again and go around the various shapes.

1st grade – They can partner off and do this activity and I often add the idea of “build a shape you could go over, under, around and/or through.”

Then have them find an open spot and I say “Build yourself into a shape.” You can have them move parts with their hands, but usually everyone gets the idea of making and holding a still shape.

This can end with any kind of Freeze Dance, and then a dance where dancers make shapes without the music stopping. (Hard for the very youngest.)

Suggested music: Dance Freeze by Abridge Club; Dance/Freeze Music by Marcella Sharp

Alternatives:

For the older children you can also bring out elastics and with the teacher’s help, they could make various shapes in groups and alone. Dances could follow with half making the shapes and half dancing.

Or use the book Ella's Trip to the Museum by Elaine Clayton. This book introduces students to the idea of an art museum. Have three music choices ready for each of the dancing opportunities and have them dance those interludes and then come back to hear more of the story

Lesson 3: Story Dance

Prop: feather duster

To introduce, I ask them who has been to a museum? (if I haven’t already done this when we read the Ella book.) What kind of museum have you been to? In Boston, there is the Childrens' Museum, the Science Museum, the Zoo (an animal museum), the Aquarium (a fish museum), and the Art Museum. What is in an art museum? Paintings ….and sculptures! I then show pictures of sculptures and we try making those with our bodies. At first all of my pictures look like people, but I make the pictures increasingly abstract and we still try to do those, either alone or with a group. Then we do a story dance. The original source is unknown but here is my version, in the dialogue that I tell as we do the dance. (Stage directions are in italics)

“Once upon a time there was a museum with many fantastic statues. People come to see the statues, say many nice things about them. (Teacher walks around and describes and compliments shapes.) At closing time, a voice comes on the loudspeaker (hold your nose) and says “It is 5 o’clock, the museum is closing. Please proceed to your car, drive safely, and wear your seat belt. The museum will reopen tomorrow at 9AM.”

Every night a janitor comes in to clean the museum First, he/she dusts all of the statues (Dust all the children with a feather duster The children love it!) Then the janitor goes to the other rooms and cleans the paintings, old furniture, jewelry, and everything (Pretend to dust a wall, with your back to the dancers ) But one night, at midnight, on the seventh day of the seventh month of the seventh year that the museum was open, some quiet (low volume) music began to play. The statues began to wiggle a little and jiggle a little, and then they jumped off of their pedestals, (volume up) and began to dance around the statue room. The janitor was in the other room and thought he/she could hear something in the statue room. (look) Nah! (Use the freeze music and dust the walls. Look back to see what is happening during the freezes, but the statues "freeze" and she never sees them move. But she makes noises and comments like “I think I hear something in here!” At one point, I usually run out of one door and back in time for another freeze. The dancers are amused.) All night long the statues danced and danced and the janitor cleaned and cleaned.

In the morning, (the last segment of the song) the janitor went home. The statues went back up on their pedestals and assumed their shapes, but they were all in different places. Huh?!? Nobody knew the mystery of the fantastic statues that danced at midnight."

This story can be adapted for performance by having kids choose their favorite art pictures and 'come out' of them I print their choices from the various art books or children’s books they own and stick them on the walls. You could project them if you have a way to do that. The janitor could be a teacher or assistant and have a little broom solo. You don't have to tell the story aloud because the dancing makes the story clear.

Jeanne Traxler is the director of Peanut Butter & Jelly Dance Company, founded in 1975 and dedicated to bringing dance to children and children to dance. During the time PB&J has been on a pandemic hiatus, Jeanne directed inschool dance performances and teacher workshops, taught creative movement classes for children, and directed a small company called SMALL FEETS in which children worked collaboratively. In 2018, Jeanne was named the Boston Dance Alliance Dance Champion for her work with young dance students and on the Children's Dance Festival. Jeanne and her companies have taken part at daCi conferences in Finland, Philadelphia and Provo and at NDEO national conferences. She also served on the daCi USA board for many years as treasurer. Currently Jeanne is the in-house dance teacher for the Baldwin Early Learning Center of the Boston Public Schools

RECOMMENDATION ZONE

Read, watch, or experience something inspiring?

Send your favorites to newsletter@daciusa.org

This is a short trailer about Air Play, a wonderful show by Acrobuffos, a very talented pair of physical theater artists/clowns. They use all kinds of “air sculptures” to beautiful and funny and emotional effect. Catch them if they land near you!

From Anna Mansbridge, Seattle

I am reading a fascinating new book called May Tomorrow Be Awake: On Poetry, Autism, and Our Neurodiverse Future by Chris Martin. He is a published poet who has been working with autistic youth for many years. The book combines cuttingedge neuroscience with beautiful poetry written by his students. Whether you are a poet or teacher or both, you will find this book educational and inspiring.

From Judith Nelson, Rhinebeck, NY

Here is a wonderful solo performance by the young tap dance great, Michelle Dorrance, performing with the fabulous Jon Batiste and Stay Human, seen on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Three minutes of pure joy!

From Anne Green Gilbert, Seattle

In my mind daCi is a powerful tool to bring people together through dance, a powerful tool for peace and under-standing. This article features dance at the core of a community of color, a community that recently suffered a grievous attack. Dance is central to bringing them back together and, bit by bit, healing them.

From Carol Day, Park City UT

“

Unspoken: A Funeral through Dance" is a seven-minute documentary on the creation of a solo by Paul Lightfoot, former artistic director of Nederlands Dans Theatre. He made the solo for his father who died in isolation during the pandemic. The doc includes Paul Lightfoot speaking about the work, rehearsal footage, and then a performance of the solo by a beautiful dancer, Sebastian Haynes. It is a moving portrait of grief and loss and hope.”

Susan Leigh Foster, prominent dance scholar at UCLA, gave a lecture and performance titled “What Dancing Does,” available on YouTube. There are intros by other speakers at the start but you can jump over them to 6:20 where Foster begins and explains (and moves!) the many ways that dance functions – physiologically, psychologically, socially, aesthetically, and politically. It is dense but becomes more accessible with a repeat viewing.

Check out the baseball scene in Damn Yankees, choreographed by Bob Fosse. He shows you can make dance out of anything!

Deborah Lipa-Ciotta, Buffalo, NY

Roz Dutton, Philadelphia

Mady Cantor, Philadelphia

From Heather Francis, Salt Lake City, Utah

Sensation: The New Science of Physical Intelligence by Thalma Lobel has been a fun read for me amid what feels like a very heady literature review on embodied learning in adult education that I’m completing for a master's degree in Instructional Psychology.

Each chapter focuses on a different physical sense and how it impacts our perception and daily life. For example, it describes studies that show how holding a warm cup of coffee or touching a soft object made participants view other things or others as more endearing or warmhearted. That’s a simplistic summary; the real details are in the book and are very accessible.

From Deborah Lipa-Ciotta, Buffalo, NY

Teacher‘s Guide to Resiliency through the Arts is a book by daCi member Cally Flox with coauthors Melissa Sadin and Nathan Levy.

I read this book and then gave it to my school’s administration. Great tool for advocating for my program!

Have something to share? Send it to newsletter@daCiUSA.org.

BULLETIN BOARD

Blog post by Vincent Thomas, daCi member from Maryland.

Vincent E. Thomas is featured in a blog post on the AEA365 (American Evaluation Association) website. The post is titled "Dance as a Means of Documentation, Exploration, Interpretation and Communication of What and How We Value" by Geri Lynn Peak and Vincent. Go to the Archive tab in the link and look for the post on 2/25/2023. Good to see that dance is part of the conversation! Vincent also notes that the entire week of 2/20/23 might be of interest since it is focused on evaluation issues in the arts.

Vincent is also celebrating the 20th anniversary of his company, VTDance.

New book by Sandra Cerny Minton, daCi USA member from Colorado.

Sandra’s new book is Rechoreographing Learning: Dance as a Way to Bridge the Mind-Body Divide in Education was just published in the Routledge Advances in Theatre & Performance Series. The book begins with making the case for the kinesthetic or body way of knowing followed by a detailed description of the human sensory systems, including proprioception. The body way of knowing is discussed next, based on connections to attention and mental imagery together with an explanation of how the body senses contribute to interpersonal and symbolic forms of communication. The final two chapters describe how and why participation in dance is related to popular learning theories, learning in general, and creating. Each chapter concludes with exploration experiences which highlight and help the reader understand the content. The book is also based on the most recent pertinent research on dance and learning in the field of dance education. To order this book, simply go to www.routledge.com. Then, type in “Rechoreographing Learning” and an image of the book’s cover will appear.

From Chara Huckins, daCi member in Utah:

My 4th grade students at Wasatch Elementary performed on two occasions for Utah state legislators. They presented a dance about Pando*, the oldest and largest organism on earth. It is located in central Utah in Fishlake National Forest. They gave the lawmakers the opportunity to experience the magic that the fine arts and culture industry bring to the state.

daCi Day of Dance, Arizona

Chara’s description of the dance: Like the aspen trees linked by their roots, people, animals and plants are all connected. We can make a world where we all have room to grow, so that, for years to come, trees everywhere can whisper in the wind, shimmer in the sunshine, dance to the birdsong, and stretch.

*For those of us who are not familiar with Pando, here is a bit more information, from Atlas Obscura: The Trembling Giant, or Pando, is an enormous grove of quaking aspens that take the “forest as a single organism” metaphor and makes it literal: the grove really is a single organism Each of the approximately 47,000 or so trees in the grove is genetically identical and all the trees share a single root system. While many trees spread through flowering and sexual reproduction, quaking aspens usually reproduce asexually, by sprouting new trees from the expansive lateral root of the parent The individual trees aren’t individuals but stems of a massive single clone. Pando is a Latin word that translates to “I spread.”

DACI USA BOARD

Joy Guarino (New York) – Chair

Heather Francis (Utah) – Chair-Elect

Carol Day (Utah) – Treasurer

Deborah Lipa-Ciotta (New York) –Secretary

Nicki Flinn (Michigan) – National Representative

Chris Roberts (Utah) – Past National Representative

Madeline Cantor (Pennsylvania) –Newsletter Editor

Chara Huckins (Utah) – Membership

Liaison

Members at Large: Kathryn Austin (Florida), Cally Flox (Utah), Amy Munro

Lang-Crow (Arizona). Sara MalanMcDonald (Arizona), Jennifer Florey (Arizona), Vincent E. Thomas (Maryland)