For Your Summer Reading Pleasure!
Along with your sunscreen and suitcase and goodies from Bunheads, you'll want to add several books from this season's summer reading list.
Perpetual Motion: Creative Exercises for Dance and Dramatic Arts (Human Kinetics) is a double-barreled book. If you are teaching dance and/or drama, and especially if you are teaching in the school system, you need this. Author Janice Pomer gives invaluable ideas for the integrated uses of the arts in education, but also has those crucial facts and studies that prove the value of the arts in education, such as. "The Association for the Advancement of Arts Education cites more than twenty examples of studies and programs that demonstrate that all of the arts are effective in reaching at-risk students and those with distinctive learning styles." That sentence alone could sway the minds of left-brained donors and board members who will learn that the arts improve such skills as group dynamics, listening, problem solving and language skills, as well as mental, emotional and physical fitness. Even the toughest educator can appreciate the goal of wanting to keep kids in school.
Pomer gives readers over 100 exercises, tidily organized around six themes, to help teachers - whether trained in dance and movement or not - to get students learning, motivated and moving toward those goals. Instead of a one-size fits-all format, Pomer offers twelve categories of learning skills for teachers, and takes teachers from step one - warm-ups - to a finished project.
Another Human Kinetic how-to is Building More Dances by Susan McGreevy-Nichols, Helene Scheff and Marty Sprague. This is the next step beyond Building Dances, which helps motivate students to move and teachers to inspire them as they explore the world of choreography in the classroom. The plus for dance educators is that teachers who follow their guidelines can rest assured that the standards and curriculum follow the National Dance Standards and the National Standards for Physical Education. Their innovative Deal-a-Dance cards will unlock brain freeze of both sides of the classroom.
These are just two of the many excellent books this company offers to dancers and dance educators. Visit them at www.humankinetics.com
Theatre Sources Dot Com - A Complete Guide to Online Theatre Resources Heinemann), by Louis Catron, is a treasure chest of sources for theatre and dance. Catron takes you from step one - search engines, to sites and web rings for theatre, sites for playwrights (looking for a particular one? Learn how to find him or her), sites for mimes, directors, technical theatre, choreographers, and the areas of stage combat, improvisation, arts management (grants help!) to name a few. More than an extraordinarily helpful listing, purchasers will also have access to a dedicated website with direct links to the sites in his book and will receive regular updates.
Heinemann is another publisher with consistently excellent and innovative books for dancers, arts teachers, actors and educators. Peruse their wealth of offerings at www.heinemanndrama.com
Dancers come in many shapes, sizes and abilities. Too often, dancers with disabilities are considered an oxymoron and are ignored. Making an Entrance (Routledge) by Adam Benjamin, has over two hundred pages and three appendixes full of ways to use and integrate dancers with and without disabilities, including the wheelchair-bound. If you have been shy about working with this special class of artists, keep this book with you, reach out and begin expanding your dancer base.
Allworth Press sent Career Solutions for Creative People by Dr Rhonda Ormont. If you are one of the millions of right-brained artists trying to survive and follow your art in a left-brained world, take heart. You can have your creative career and make a living. Chapter One is perhaps the most important and definitely the most eye opening. "Are Your Creative and Career Commitments in Balance?" Balance? Yes, Ormont helps you get your act together from page three on and doesn't ease up until you have assessed and reassessed every inch and corner of your abilities and dreams, then set them up against reality with her questions, charts and guidelines. Dancer? Journalist? Chef? Fitness Trainer? Sign Language Interpreter? These careers and others, complete with job descriptions, the pros and cons (the reality of your supposed dream job), and what training you'll need, are clearly presented. Get it, get to work, then get some work.
Dances With Demons, The Life of Jerome Robbins (Berkley) by Greg Lawrence, is an interesting look into the life of this infuriating genius. Lawrence excels in bringing out the beastly part of Robbins amazing life. What Robbins did was create miracles onstage, but oh what he did to those he was working with, from the expected scathing put-downs to betraying fellow artists during the McCarthy hearings, to .....Well, you'll see. The man's life, as presented in this book, will make soap operas and wild talk shows seem inane.
OK - a book, sunscreen, extra tights. OOPS - And something from Bunheads! Try their new Jr. Ouch Pouch. It's all the breathable cushy comfort you've grown to love but in a tinier package. You don't have to be on pointe to use these. Hip Hoppers and Irish dancers, when in their jig (hard - very hard!) shoes, are learning to slip on a pair of Ouch Pouches and use them even after their shoes are broken in. This size is great for wider feet or for those who need only the toes covered.
Ballet and Celtic dancers are about the only ones who love to be knotted up from head to foot in a manner of speaking, but satin pointe shoe and ghillie ribbons are often their undoing below, as are their buns and headpieces above. Bunheads offers tip to toe solutions. Knot Keepers are nifty bits of transparent adhesive that will replace the need for Elmer's glue, sewing ribbons to tights, water and other tricks to ensure the shoe stays on till the dance is done. Simply unpeel a Knot Keeper, fold over the ribbon or string, and press. And for things on high, Bunheads has industrial strength hairpins (the kind that really work) in two lengths and three colors. One of these will work for you where you have had to use four and five before. Visit this site for more information: www.bunheads.com •