Urban Gateways Artists Wired

[Kevin] Greeley Percussion Club 2009-2010

Here's a little video I finally threw together showing the students of the "Percussion Club" that John Knecht and I taught this past school year at Uptown's wonderful Horace Greeley Elementary School. The footage focuses on one of their first drumset lessons with me, as well as my final session with them, a rehearsal for their final performance that includes a rendition of Green Day's "21 Guns" -- Enjoy!

responses

I just came across this blog post I wrote a while back on another site. It's about a summer program in performance poetry I worked on a few years ago, and its impact on the 20 high school students we had the privilege to work with. I had forgotten that I wrote it, and was so glad to stumble across this again, as it captures specific details that I might have forgotten otherwise.

More than that, it captures some details about the students' response to me, and what a rare experience it is to hear so much about how your students are impacted by an art experience. It's a moment of how I was feeling in December of 2008 as an artist in education.

One note: the summer program with these kids that I mention took place at a central site during the summer, and consisted of students from various parts of the city. 

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December 5, 2008

Reasons to Believe

1. I posted some photos online from the high school poetry workshop I taught last summer, which continues to burn in my mind. I’m glad that I waited to post the photos until the cascade of other photos from the students were through, until they were well into their semesters at school, and maybe had forgotten some of the smaller moments. When I did this, T. posted a comment, to the effect of  “I’m literally in tears,” how much he missed everybody, and how “professional” he thought the class was compared some other folks he’s working with now. Never expected that. So amazed to know that his memory of how the group dynamic turned out is so rosy. It really did turn out pretty great at the end–the kids got past their differences and learned to work in spite of them. But woooooooo…we had our moments.
2. A day or two later, A. texted me to thank us for teaching the class, and to let me know that he had won a contest at some youth arts conference in Wisconsin with one of the poems that he’d written in our program over the summer.
3. Then T. sent me a message: I still think about u. U r the sun exploding in my soul. I ment to thank u b cuz I’m realizing how much of not only a better poet but person u molded me to b. Keep ur head up and wash your hair. (He’s referencing a line from “All She Wrote” by Harryette Mullen–”Wash your wet hair?”, a poem we read over the summer).
4. E. and I (as well as A. and I) have been braiding poetry back and forth, at their request, since the workshop ended. E. just asked if I would record some of the poems with him for his new album. I also found out that he started poetry braids with A., and another classmate of his.
5. I saw E. perform the other night, and he said, “Thanks for keeping me writing!” I–kind of flabbergasted–said, “No, thanks for keeping me writing!” He said that he misses poetry and hasn’t been getting enough.

It just never occurred to me what a lasting effect this workshop would have on the kids, kind of a ripple effect of new collaborations, new work, and relationships that are ongoing. I’m thankful that I get a little snapshot from them every once in a while of what’s going on (who’s been accepted to what college, who’s working on a student newspaper, who’s performing…). It isn’t often that, as a teacher, I get to see what my kids are like in the time after I’ve worked with them, and to even imagine whether the work has had any impact on them or not. I don’t flatter myself that I’ve played a vital part–the students I worked with last summer are really talented, full of initiative, and by and large extremely hard-working–they’ll find opportunities regardless. But just hearing from them and getting the thanks, knowing that they’re doing well, encourages me in the middle of what has been a long and challenging fall…the kids I have right now are fabulous, but there are so many of them. The poems are amazing, but I only have 40 minutes a pop, and I see about 180+ kids at each of the two schools where I’m a poet-in-residence.

I’m just glad to know it matters.

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[Steph] Why does after school have to be over?

I miss my after school program kids.  I really do.  My year long residency at Greeley has been over for about 2 weeks and yup, I miss those kids.  Half the time, they made me insane & occasionally made me question my teaching skills but honestly, it was such a beautiful teaching experience.  They challenged me and made me better.  They made me work hard for their attention, but ahhhhhh, when I got it, it felt good.  They loved to dance.  They stepped outside of their comfort zones.  They weren't afraid to use their voices in performance.  And most importantly, they came to class... every single day.  They were always enthusiastic & offered to do the sweetest things, like asking to carry my radio or hold the door open.  Does it get much better than that?  Not really.

On the final performance day one of my students, Moses, asked me, "Why does after school have to be over?  I wish it would never end."  

• Way to have the key to my heart Moses.  Wayyyyyy to have it.

Thank you to my primary hip hop class @ Greeley Elementary School for their undeniable awesomeness.  I am honored to have been your teacher!  

The final performance day (5/20/10):

 

Another pic from the last day! 

 

Lets rewind to March for a second... here is some of the class taking a fun pic after doing some negative space exploration (3/22/10):

 

Ok ok, this has nothing to do with dance BUT on my birthday (3/22/10), two of my amazing kids offered to play me a birthday song.  How could I say no?  :)

 

 
 
 

[Kevin] Be the Groove - Breath

This is a video that a few of the more established company members of Be the Groove (including UG's own Steph Paul) shot back in March with a longtime friend/collaborator named Dan Truog, who currently works as a video director and editor in San Francisco. Of course he arrived in Chicago on the one weekend in March when the weather was awful! But we pulled through and got some great footage, and this piece "Breath" came together nicely... In fact, we just learned that this video was accepted as a nominee for a video contest hosted by the Chicago Human Rhythm Project! If you like the video, please vote for it to be screened at a CHRP show at the Museum of Contemporary Art in August by going here. Thanks for watching!

(For best viewing, bump the resolution up to at least 480p)

[Steph] Does anybody know what it means to be inspired?

Today's task: Create choreography inspired by animals.  

(Why animals you ask?  My initial idea was shapes, but I later decided that this would be more fun.  I mean, who doesn't want the chance to dance like a dinosaur?)

I split my 1st-3rd grade hip hop class into 4 groups.  Each group picked a folded piece of paper out of a pile (to be kept secret from the other groups) with the name of an animal.  They were instructed to create choreography inspired by whichever animal they chose. 

Me: " So, does anybody know what it means to be inspired?"

Students:

• "to be happy!"
• "to like something!"
• "to have confidence!"

Not a bad start.  I told them inspiration can lead to all of those things.  We talked a bit about how being inspired can lead you to develop fresh, new ideas...  that you can take from what you've learned in one experience & apply it to other situations.  We would take inspiration from the animals we chose and develop a dance.  I told them we didn't have to be literal and try to be the animal.  If one were to draw the word "cat," I was not expecting them to meow and chase after mice.

"Think about the way the animal moves... the way the animal carries itself...  Is it weak or strong?  Is it loud or quiet?  What kind of shapes does it make?  Let those ideas help you as you create."

This wasn't so much a hip hop dance exercise but an opportunity for them to simply explore.  However, I did expect that their dances would all have a slight hip hop tinge because they have been immersed in the technique the past few months.  

At the end of their creation, they shared their dances with each other.  After each dance, the rest of the class got a chance to guess each group's animal.  I found that this encouraged each student to be a really observant and respectful viewer.  All in all, it was a fun & creative day.  Enjoy the video! (Oh, apologies if you are sick of the song.  They LOVE it, so I felt it was only right...)  

[John] Culmination at Northtown H.S.

Jason Wolf and I finished up our residency at Northtown High School in Chicago.  The school is part of the Urban Gateways CEP program and has an international theme, so it was a nice fit for our world percussion workshops.  After visiting and studying many cultures like India, Brazil, Guinea, Japan and Cuba, each class chose a culture and performed it as part of the school's "Culture Fest."  

Here is the video of the Ms. Rousakis' class.  They chose to rehearse and present Brazil.  The students selected the country, helped build the arrangement, divided up the instruments and led each other in the performance.  Nice job guys!

[Rachel] I am child world

A while back, I did a couple of one-off workshops in poetry at Family Focus Oak Terrace at with a group of 2nd-4th graders. I shared the work of Krista Franklin with them and we talked about her intriguing pieces, what they brought up for us, and what kind of methods they might include. I then gave them clipped-out words, magazine pictures, and other goodies to play with and create their own poem/collages. One student stood out, especially to the teacher. Afterward the teacher spoke to me, saying that this student had been through some traumatic times, and about how it did his heart good to see Tyrek so merrily creating, coming through such a sad time. I had noticed how hard he'd worked on his piece, and with focus and joy, but I wouldn't have known anything was out of the ordinary unless the teacher had spoken to me.

"Take that with you and keep it," the teacher said, meaning this story, saying that we don't always have a chance to know whether we're having a positive impact or not. He kept telling me, just know that you did something good today, take that with you.

[Kevin] Musings from artist Jason Jägel

"Music and listening to records is unique for me, an experience I can have and be directly inspired by while simultaneously making work. Lyric fragments or biographical information are recorded within paintings. Rhythms and time signatures create an atmosphere that facilitates how marks and images flow through me. Enter a rhythm while working and something new and unexpected will follow...

The music I like most enduringly is often music that I didn't like so much when I first heard it. For me, pop music is disposable after a possible initial attraction but the most unique artists sustain my interest. What I take from that is my need to learn an artist's unique language in order to properly understand what's happening. The work opens up over time and, with levels of discovery, becomes richer. The best artists are experts—connoisseurs in an idiosyncratic field, in touch with a host of ideas and history whose combination is unique to them. I may not know if I'm aligned with their taste until I take the time to absorb the spectrum. I'd go as far as to say that art is meant to be a testimony to the indelible singularity of each individual. By that notion art is inherently political, offering testimony to a foreign worldview possibly intimidating or threatening."

– Jason Jägel, excerpted from an interview conducted by Gabe Scott (Juxtapoz magazine, Issue no.108)

 

[Maia] wild wild west

I am doing two after school residencies right now.  Usually, I am more of an in-school residency kind of gal.  School day residencies have their own set of challenges -- there is the collaboration with a classroom teacher -- more cooks in the kitchen and all that, but after school sometimes seems like the wild west.  In the program I first wrote about on this blog I have had a different group of students every single week.  It was designed to be an eight week drama program leading to a culminating event -- a sharing of an original performance with others in the school community.  It's a tall order to write and rehearse an original piece of theater with fourth and fifth graders in eight weeks, and it's an especially tall order when you have a different group of students every week!  We are trying to make it work; we read through the rough draft of the script last week with the students who showed up (10 of them!; the most we've had ever, I suppose that's a good sign).  It was a bit of controlled chaos.  We added some lines to the script which consists of vignettes about family, the theme the students (the first day's batch of students, that is) chose, played some theater games aimed at creating ensemble and began to develop some stage pictures based on family portraits.  Now we have two weeks off because of ISATs.  We'll see who appears at our next session, when I'll have a final draft of our script which we will have two sessions to rehearse.  Woo hah!

[John] Day in the Life

I thought it might be interesting to track a day in the life of a drummer teaching artist. . . .

My wife Ashley and I got up around 7am.  I organized all of the drums we would need for the morning show (Ashley is in the show with me): six West African drums, three Middle Eastern drums, three Brazilian drums, two didgeridoos, a log drum, and a bag of assorted shakers, sticks and metal percussion.  After a quick breakfast, we're out the door with coffee in hand. 

We arrive at the school an hour early and meet Michael, our other expert drummer, who has brought his marching snare and drumset.  After meeting all of the school administrative staff we set up and wait for the students.  One of my favorite parts of the show is before we play any notes.  The students enter the gym and their eyes fall out of their heads as they see a stage filled with drums.  "WOOOAAHH" can be heard continuously as a preamble to our downbeat.  It always cracks me up.