Cuisine & Confessions (Grades 9-12)

CUISINE & CONFESSIONS STUDY GUIDE

The Broad Stage present

Cuisine & Confessions

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STUDENT MATINEE

FRIDAY FEB 17, 2017 11 AM GRADES 9-12

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CUISINE & CONFESSIONS STUDY GUIDE

Jane Deknatel Director, Performing Arts Center EDUCATION & COMMUNITY PROGRAMS STAFF Ilaan Egeland Mazzini, Director of Education & Community Programs Alisa De Los Santos, Manager of Education & Community Programs Mandy Matthews, Education & Community Programs Associate Sam Sandoval, Education & Community Programs Assistant Stephanie Abrams, Kinetic Theory Circus Arts, Curriculum Contributor

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Education and Community Programs at The Broad Stage is supported in part by Herb Alpert Foundation Bank of the West Johnny Carson Foundation City of Santa Monica and the Santa Monica Arts Commission Colburn Foundation The Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation Leonard M. Lipman Charitable Fund Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission The Ralph M. Parsons Foundation SMC Associates Sidney Stern Memorial Trust Dwight Stuart Youth Fund Ziering Family Foundation, a Support Foundation of the Jewish Community Foundation of Los Angeles

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EDUCATION & COMMUNITY PROGRAMS Phone 310.434.3560 education@thebroadstage.com thebroadstage.com/education

CUISINE & CONFESSIONS STUDY GUIDE

Greetings from The Broad Stage!

Dear Educators,

Les Sept Doigts de la Main revolutionized the circus medium and contributed to the creation of a new genre, contemporary circus. The company strives to highlight the human experience in their productions where performer’s breathe, dance, and speak from the heart. This intimacy and familiarity allows performer’s to take flight.

Cuisine & Confessions explores what happens in the kitchen; recipes are exchanged, testimonials are heard, and friendships are formed. Performer’s share their personal experience with food and ask audience members to interact and reflect on their own.

Please take some time to work through some or all of the activities in this guide with your students. Each element of the guide has been developed by circus artists and educators to help explain the concepts behind the performance you’ll be seeing and to engage you and your students both pre- and post-show. As always, the activities support the California Common Core and the VAPA Standards. We hope that this guide proves to be helpful in preparing your students for the presentation.

Please don’t hesitate to contact us with questions or ideas. We’ll see you at Cuisine & Confessions!

Sincerely, Education & Community Programs Staff

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We are so excited to bring Les Sept Doigts de la Main or Seven Fingers of the Hand to The Broad Stage this season! The company will be performing one of their most well-known creations, Cuisine & Confessions. Les Sept Doigts de la Main has surged to the forefront of the contemporary circus world and transformed the way audiences around the globe experience circus arts.

CUISINE & CONFESSIONS STUDY GUIDE

Contents Lessons Lesson 1: Defining Contemporary Circus Lesson 2: Food, Meals, and Memories Lesson 3: Performing Spoken Word

Index Handout 1: Contemporary Circus Handout 2: Artist Statement Handout 3: Spoken Word California Common Core Standards Addressed VAPA Standards Addressed

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Lesson 4: The Power of Storytelling

CUISINE & CONFESSIONS STUDY GUIDE

Lesson 1: Defining Contemporary Circus Description: Students will explore the elements of contemporary circus and connect concepts to their own movement.

Goals: 1. Identify the elements that define contemporary circus.

2. Explore those elements through movement.

Materials: Handout 1: Contemporary Circus, Handout 2: Artist Statement Duration: 60 minutes

Part 1: Exploring Contemporary Circus Watch Les Sept Doigts de la Main’s highlight reel of Cuisine & Confessions on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KupNtEzPow4

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Review and read Handout 1: Contemporary Circus and highlight or underline the elements that define contemporary circus.

Re-watch the video and have students write down their thoughts about the clip from Cuisine & Confessions.

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What is a contemporary circus?

How is this different than traditional circus?

Have you seen circus before? Was it like this?

What elements did you notice in the video? What were the stunts? Were there dance or storytelling elements? What did these communicate?

What are the common factors that define circus?

Discuss contemporary circus together. Ask students to share what they wrote and talk together as a class.

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Ask students what they noticed in the video. Was this what we think of as traditional circus?

What parts of the clip captured your attention?

CUISINE & CONFESSIONS STUDY GUIDE

Lesson 1, cont.

Introduce Les Sept Doigts de la Main (The Seven Fingers of the Hand) and review their bio.

Les Sept Doigts de la Main is performing their piece, Cuisine & Confessions, based on the performer’s real memories and experiences in the kitchen. Read the company’s artist statement in Handout 2.

• • •

What is their intention as a company?

What art forms do they incorporate in their performances?

What do they mean when they say, “We strive to create shows along the very scale and grandeur of human beings?”

Part 2: Space Exploration through Movement Move desks to the perimeter of the room or go to an open space outside or in the auditorium.

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Spacewalk and space shaping exercises help performers develop ways of sensing and experiencing their environment and bodies. Performers strive to experience the space around them as an actual dimension where they can communicate and be free. Creating objects out of “space substance” helps the performers make their ideas tangible using only their bodies. When the invisible becomes visible, the performer can communicate anything to their audience. Side coaching and creativity is vital to this exercise!

Instruct students to walk around the room naturally. Remind them to be mindful of their classmates while walking and to avoid walking in the same pattern or following anyone.

1. While walking, ask students to notice the way their skeletal system moves. Developing self-awareness of how the body moves is vital for performers. Knowing how the bones are aligned and where they are when moving in space helps to prevent injuries and perform stunts. Encourage students to think about their feet, legs, hips, torso, arms, shoulders, and head when walking by asking these questions:

• How do your feet feel while you walk? Is your weight evenly distributed? Or is your weight on the inside or outside of your foot? Do all of the bones in your feet connect to the ground when you walk?

• Do you bend or straigthen your knees when you walk? Do your knees extend over your big toe? Do you lock your knees when you stand?

• Are your hips over or behind your ankles? How does the ball and socket joint in your hip move to make your leg extend to the front while walking?

• Are your shoulders shrugged or down? Do your arms sway? Do you arch your back?

Continue walking naturally with these in mind. Do you feel more connected to your body?

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Note for the teachers:

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Lesson 1, cont.

2. Have students increase their pace and move around the space freely.

3. Ask them to move as if they are fully submerged within a substance. Have students move through each substance together and encourage them to use all of their senses to explore the substance. Tell your students to allow their movement to show what the substance is and what it does.

• Ocean waves • Peanut butter • Wind • Cotton Candy • Deep snow • Syrup

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Come back together as a class and ask students to reflect and share their experience. Did they learn something new about the way their body moves? What was their favorite substance to move through? Why would this exercise be helpful for the performers in Les Sept Doigts de la Main?

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4. Ask students to come up with their own substance to move through and explore. Have students share their substance with someone else by collecting it in a ball and showing its characteristics: does it roll, is it edible, is it wet, can you mold it? Each student should share the substance with a couple of people.

CUISINE & CONFESSIONS STUDY GUIDE

Lesson 2: Food, Meals, and Memories Description: Students will identify memories surrounding food and write their own spoken word monologue.

Goals: 1. Students understand the role that food plays in Cuisine & Confessions.

2. Students successfully write a monologue that they can later perform.

Duration: 60 minutes

Part 1: Discussion

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Ask students to explore their relationship to food through a quick write exercise.

• Describe your favorite food. What does it taste, smell, or feel like?

• What is a tradition around food for your family?

• Describe a meaningful conversation you have had in the kitchen. What did you discuss?

• Have you made a meal for someone else? What do you make? What was the circumstance?

After exploring on their own, have students share their quick write with a partner.

Come together and ask some students to share their quick write with the entire class as the performers in Les Sept Doigts de la Main share their personal memories from the stage. Discuss the common themes within their quick writes. Do students see a connection between close relationships with loved ones and their memories of food? What might this tell us about what it means to share a meal in our cultures? Can we make any predictions based on our own stories about the stories that the performers will share?

Consider the opposite. Near the end of the show, one of the performers shares his personal story of losing his father as an infant. He explained that his father was an Argentinian “Desaparecido” (The Disappeared) and was taken from their home. For him, food often makes him wonder about his father and what his last meal was. Read and discuss this quote from Cuisine & Confessions with your class.

“If serving food is an act of love, how do you cook for a man who is being put to his death?”

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Introduce the role that food, the kitchen, or meals play in Cuisine & Confessions: During the show, the performers share their individual experiences surrounding food through spoken word and movement. They share personal memories or thoughts that they had when eating a specific food, sitting down at a dinner table or making a certain recipe.

CUISINE & CONFESSIONS STUDY GUIDE

Lesson 2, cont.

Ask students to return to their partner and share their thoughts about the quote. Do you believe serving food is an act of love? How is sharing a meal an equalizer? Does eating/cooking together require a certain amount of intimacy?

Part 2: Activity

Have students answer these questions in their piece.

• Why is this memory important? Who cooked the food? Where were you?

• How old are you?

• What feelings does this memory evoke?

• What does it smell like?

• What did it taste like? Was it flavorful?

TAKE IT FURTHER! Divide students into small groups of two or three and assign each group to a foreign country. Have students research authentic food from that country. How is the food served? Are there any food-based traditions? What makes food an essential part of that culture? Ask students to present their research to each other.

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Engage students in a spoken word creation. In Cuisine & Confessions, the performers use spoken word to tell their story about their experiences with food and invite audiences to recall their own experiences. Ask students to write their own spoken word piece based on a memory of food.

CUISINE & CONFESSIONS STUDY GUIDE

Lesson 3: Performing Spoken Word Description: Students will learn the elements of a spoken word piece and perform their own piece.

Goals: 1. Students will learn and practice techniques used by spoken word artists.

2. Students will apply the techniques learned to their piece.

Materials: Handout 3: Spoken Word Duration: 60-75 minutes

Part 1: Exploration Review Handout 3: Spoken Word with your students.

Watch Donovan Livingston speech at his Harvard Graduation in May 2016 as an example of spoken word.

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After the video, ask students what techniques were powerful in Livingston’s speech.

Ask students to reread their piece they created in Lesson 2. Where in their piecee could they add a pause, facial expression, gesture, enunciation, or look up? Have students underline or highlight points in their monologue to piece spoken word performance qualities.

Give students 10 minutes each to practice and give feedback with a partner.

Part 2: Perform Ask volunteers to perform their piece for the class. Encourage everyone in the class to participate.

After each performance, ask students to share 1 or 2 qualities of spoken word that the performer included in their piece.

Have students write a short reflection on their experience.

• What qualities of spoken word did you include in your piece?

• How did it feel to perform in front of the class?

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eUl4gF0ED4

CUISINE & CONFESSIONS STUDY GUIDE

Lesson 4: The Power of Storytelling Description: Students will reflect on Cuisine & Confessions and explore the concepts of risk taking and storytelling.

Goals: 1. Students will learn and practice techniques used by spoken word artists.

2. Students will apply the elements used in Contemporary Circus as they create their own performance phrase.

Duration: 60-75 minutes

Part 1: Discussion Engage students in a post-show dialogue about Cuisine & Confessions.

• What intrigued you as an audience member?

• What was your favorite moment of the performance?

• What physical and emotional risks did the performers take in the show?

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• How did the performers’ personal stories shape the show?

• What was the significance of food in the show?

• In what ways did the performers engage with the audience?

• How did the set, lighting, and soundscape help tell the story?

Part 2: Activity Create an open space for students to move around the room.

Introduce the “physicalizing” exercise to students and describe its relation to circus performance with the following: “Physicalizing” is a term that theatre teachers and directors use to describe communicating details with the body. Much like describing details in words, physicalizing allows a performer to use the body to articulate their ideas.

First, engage your students with the “Show Us Your Name” Exercise.

1. Instruct students to stand in a large circle facing inward.

2. One at a time, ask students to say their name while doing a gesture or movement that they feel describes themselves.

3. After the first person shares name and movement, ask the class to repeat that person’s name and movement.

4. Sequence each subsequent name and movement so they build on each other.

5. When you get back to the first person, repeat the full sequence all together.

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• When did you see trust in the show?

CUISINE & CONFESSIONS STUDY GUIDE

Lesson 4, cont.

Second, introduce the “phrasing” exercise with the following: “Phrasing” is a term that describes using movements to link together ideas. Just as one speaking or writing needs to articulate clear words and sentences with punctuation to make their ideas clear, the physical performer needs to articulate clear gestures and movement in a series of movements to express their idea.

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Have a discussion about what students learned during the two exercises. How would these exercises be helpful for circus performers?

Part 3: Activity Transition your class into the next activity of creating their own movement phrase with the following: Now that you learned the skills of physicalizing and phrasing, build a one to two minute movement phrase based on the personal memory of food each student used for their spoken word piece.

Remind students of these questions as a starting point for their phrase. Why is this memory important? Who cooked the food? How old are you? Who were you with? Where were you? What feelings does this memory evoke?

Ask students to include elements that they saw in the performance of Cuisine & Confessions. In their movement, this piece could include facial expressions, speaking aloud, or allowing movement to represent an emotion. Allow students to be creative while telling their story.

Come together as a class and ask students to share their movement phrase either in large groups or in front of the whole class.

Discuss their experience together. What storytelling elements did you include? Was creating movement challenging for you? What was the inspiration behind the way in which you told your story?

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1. Have each student write an adjective, noun, or verb on a piece of paper. Fold the piece of paper and collect them in a basket.

2. Tell each student to draw a piece of paper from the basket and refrain from looking at the paper until everyone has picked one.

3. Instruct each student to open the paper and create a short movement phrase that describes the word. Similar to the “Show Us Your Name” exercise, have each student create their phrase without too much thought. Ask students to create their phrase based on the movement that came natural to them while also moving directionally. Give them three minutes maximum.

4. Ask some students to share their phrases to the class.

CUISINE & CONFESSIONS STUDY GUIDE

Handout 1: Contemporary Circus Read the definition of contemporary circus below. Highlight or underline key points that are essential to the art form.

Contemporary circus, is a genre of performing art developed in the later 20th century in which a story or a theme is conveyed through traditional circus skills. Animals are rarely used in this type of circus, and traditional circus skills are blended with a more character-driven approach.

Compared with the traditional circuses of the past, the contemporary approach tends to focus more attention on the overall aesthetic impact, on character and story development, and on the use of lighting design, original music, and costume design to convey thematic or narrative content.

Les Sept Doigts de la Main or Seven Fingers of the Hand is a contemporary circus company that transformed the way audiences around the globe experience circus. The company strives to create “circus at human scale” where performer’s breath, dance, and speak from the heart allowing intimacy and familiarity play a large role. Les Sept Doigts de la Main were pioneers in the creation of a new genre called, contemporary circus.

Cuisine & Confessions Life happens in the kitchen. Late night confessionals over tisane and a pot of Nutella.

Elaborately choreographed family meals. Lessons learned, secrets exchanged, bonds forged, by our most visceral of senses. A remarkable collaboration of circus, avant-garde dance, spoken word, theater, and cooking show comedy awaits you.

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Read about the company, Sept Doigts de la Main and their show, Cuisine & Confessions.

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Handout 2: Artist Statement This collective is founded by a core of artists and collaborators inhabited by the same vision and spirit of cooperation and solidarity. Our intention is first and foremost to create. We wish to think outside the box, to innovate, surprise, and touch. We strive to create shows along the very scale and grandeur of human beings, in which viewers can easily identify with the artists. By integrating different art forms such as music, dance, theatre, visual arts, cinema, and electronic media, we propose a new perspective on the everyday. The extraordinary is hidden inside the wake of the ordinary. In addition to delighting audiences, we invite spectators to question their own perceptions of life and or reality, encouraging them to reflect on their own values and hopes.

Isabelle Chasse, Shana Carroll, Patrick Leonard, Faon Shane, Gypsy Snider, Sebastien Soldevila and Samuel Tetreault (April 2002)

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Handout 3: Spoken Word Spoken word is writing that is meant to be read and performed aloud. Spoken word pieces include monologues, poetry, rap, stand-up comedy, or stories. In Cuisine & Confessions, performers use spoken word to relate their memories, experiences, and stories about food to the audience. When creating and performing your own spoken word piece, use these techniques to enhance your performance quality.

Posture Eye Contact Projection Enunciation Pauses Facial Expressions Gestures

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• • • • • • •

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California Common Core Standards Addressed

Lesson 2: Grades 9-12 Writing 3. Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, well-chosen details, and well-structured event sequences. d. Use precise words and phrases, telling details, and sensory language to convey a vivid picture of the experiences, events, setting, and/or characters.

4. Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.

Speaking and Listening 1. Initiate and participate effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grades 9-12 topics, texts, and issues, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.

3. Evaluate a speaker’s point of view, reasoning, and use of evidence and rhetoric, identifying any fallacious reasoning or exaggerated or distorted evidence.

Language 1. Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English grammar and usage when writing or speaking.

5. Demonstrate understanding of figurative language, word relationships, and nuances in word meanings.

Lesson 3: Grades 9-12 Writing 3. Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, well-chosen details, and well-structured event sequences.

Speaking and Listening 1. Initiate and participate effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grades 9-12 topics, texts, and issues, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.

Lesson 4: Grades 9-12 Speaking and Listening 1. Initiate and participate effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grades 9-12 topics, texts, and issues, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.

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Lesson 1: Grades 9-12 Speaking and Listening 1. Initiate and participate effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grades 9-12 topics, texts, and issues, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.

Language 1. Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English grammar and usage when writing or speaking.

CUISINE & CONFESSIONS STUDY GUIDE

VAPA Standards Addressed Dance 1.0 Artistic Perception Development of Motor Skills, Technical Expertise, and Dance Movements 1.1 Demonstrate refined physical coordination when performing movement phrases (e.g., alignment, agility, balance, strength).

Comprehension and Analysis of Dance Elements 1.4 Demonstrate clarity of intent while applying kinesthetic principles for all dance elements.

2.0 Creation/Invention of Dance Movement Creation/Invention of Dance Movement 2.1 Create a body of works of dance demonstrating originality, unity, and clarity of intent.

Application of Choreographic Principles and Processes to Creating Dance 2.3 Design a dance that utilizes an established dance style or genre.

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5.0 Connections, Relationships, Applications Development of Life Skills and Career Competencies 5.4 Explain how participation in dance develops creative skills for lifelong learning and well-being that are interpersonal and intrapersonal.

Theatre 1.0 Artistic Perception Comprehension and Analysis of the Elements of Theatre 1.2 Document observations and perceptions of production elements, noting mood, pacing, and use of space through class discussion and reflective writing.

4.0 Aesthetic Valuing Derivation of Meaning from Works of Theatre 4.2 Report on how a specific actor used drama to convey meaning in his or her performances.

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4.0 Aesthetic Valuing Description, Analysis, and Criticism of Dance 4.1 Describe how the qualities of a theatrical production contribute to the success of a dance performance (e.g., music, lighting, costuming, text, set design).