As part of a residency grant from Arkansas Arts Council, Arkansas Learning Through The Arts brought resident dance artist, Kathleen Marleneanu, to Harmony Grove School District two days per week for fourteen weeks from September through March. For kindergarten through grade 3, the school has selected ALTTA workshops that integrate dance with literacy units, including Wizard of Oz, Cinderella, Peter and the Wolf and Robin Hood. From Marleneanu’s perspective, “For these students, as with anyone, dance is such a wonderful way to exercise not only their bodies, but also their minds and spirits.”
Dancer Marleneanu sparked K-3 students’ imagination by describing a character’s emotions – such as scared, glaring, happy – or his or her appearance – such as pretty, small or gigantic – through physical motions. Because the dance is set to music, they also learned how a musical phrase can represent a character. The students were very excited to perform and record the dance together so they could see what they have created. Each of the modules was linked to a specific story about which the students could develop opinions about the characters or what happened in the story.
Kindergarten students were entranced by teaching artist and ballet dancer Marleneanu as they learned about the characters in “Peter and the Wolf.” The students were divided among the characters and decided how to best express the person’s or animal’s changing emotions as the story unfolded. Because the story is set to music, they could also relate their dance motions to their character’s musical theme. At the end of the residency they recorded the entire story to see how well they had conveyed the story.
“Spinning in the Wind” was the module selected for first graders and related to a segment of the Wizard of Oz story. Students danced their way through the tornado in the story and portrayed different characters in the story through creative movement.
Second grade students recently welcomed Marleneanu into the classroom with her program, “Egyptian Cinderella.” Students have been learning the story of Cinderella as told in cultures around the world, and the essential question posed by the teaching module was: What can versions of the same story teach us about different cultures? Marleneanu taught students simple ballet movements that the English Cinderella might have known, Egyptian movements tied to the story of Rhodopis, the Egyptian Cinderella, and Chinese dance for Yeh-Shen, Chinese Cinderella.
Teacher Pam Belding organized a culminating evening event with the parents for all second grade students to perform “Egyptian Cinderella.”
Third graders were introduced to the Jazz Age and learned about creative and inventive people of the early 20th century, such as Langston Hughes and Ella Fitzgerald, using movement to depict the rich poetry and song lyrics of the era. They also learned to dance the Charleston as a way to understand the culture of the Roaring 20s.
For grades 4 – 6, Marleneanu introduced students to a variety of forms of dance in several sessions. Their culminating performance was a ‘flash mob’ performed at the halftime of the girls varsity basketball game with Glen Rose on January 17. Through this approach, students of all ages experience the joy of dance. According to Kevin Taylor, Harmony Grove Middle School principal, “Having Ms. Marleneanu on our campus has been an amazing experience for our students. Her instruction has offered our students an opportunity to express themselves in a manner in which many of them have never experienced nor would have had the opportunity to do so had we not taken advantage of this program through the Learning Through The Arts organization. To see our students interact with her and be a part of the learning experiences she offers has been very rewarding and we can’t wait to see the final product they are preparing for us.”
For further information about ALTTA, go to altta.org or contact Craig Welle, executive director, 214-676-0222, or Martha Smither, board president, 501-922-2743.
