Claremont International High School
9th/10th Grade Winter 2019-20 Residency
Our ninth grade students at CIHS studied Theater with Ms. Warnke. They saw Judgment Day at the Armory. They were also scheduled to perform an excerpt from Zoot Suit at their school. Both plays were written around WWII. Both plays have a mystical side and both plays have outbursts reflecting mob violence. The interest in having the residency was to discover movement that could possibly inspire choreography for the student production while developing inquiry around balance, bullying and styles of movement that juxtapose the two.
Our dance class became a celebration of culture. Our students were from many different places and we incorporated music from The Caribbean and Africa. We explored counterbalances that were exciting, unexpected and looked like visual outbursts. These exercises found in dance stretch the body and the imagination. Our students were courageous and immediately wanted to experience the most challenging counterbalances. They even discovered ways they could perform counter balances in ensembles.
In addition to partnering, we collaborated in ensembles, encouraged solos and sandwiched our work with tableau. We also learned a warrior dance from Ghana that required unison and opposite movements. Phrases of movement from the warrior dance were modified and incorporated into ensemble work.
My fondest memories of these classes were when students took the lead. Four or five students would stand on the stage in front of our class and lead isolations, plies, stretches, counterbalances and phrases of movement. As our class culminated we incorporated live music and lighting to evoke the feeling of performing in a theater and to employ many opportunities to support the performers and engage everyone in the room with a task. It was joyous.
Spring 2020 Residency: Objects of Devotion
The partnership between Claremont International H.S. 9th & 10th grade visual art students and Armory Education took place during an undeniably transformative time – February through June, 2020. Fittingly, our work focused on the transformation that is possible when visual art, music and emotion collide.
Inspired by the Armory's would-be production of Maria Vespers, we began by listening to music and drawing what we heard – honing our deep listening skills and allowing emotion to guide our pencils. Drawing inspiration from comic-loving art professor Lynda Berry, we lived by the creed "bad art is good art" as our self-portraits and still-lifes morphed from literal to abstract. Emotion took precedence over accuracy.
Once COVID's remote learning took over, Ms. Caroline, Peter and Amo devised an at-home project combining the Maria Vespers themes of deep observation and obsessive love with the students' previously learned drawing techniques for a timely riff on the "still-life" called Objects of Devotion. Students took a photo of an object from their homes that has taken on new significance in the COVID era and, using art elements like space, color and texture, infused their drawings with heightened emotion.
