A Moving Experience

Dancer/choreographer Lynn Brown, a lanky, loose-limbed man, began his midmorning class in FitzGerald Gym with an easy combination of moves. Imitating him, a dozen giggling three-year-olds stood in a row in their stocking feet, sat on the wooden floor of the dance studio, and scooted forward on their butts. Brown, a teaching artist with the Lincoln Center Institute, had brought his material down to his students’ level, to the evident delight of all.

“QC has partnered with the Lincoln Center Institute for many years now,” reports Dean Penny Hammrich (Education), who says the goal is to integrate aesthetic education into teacher-preparation programs.  “Our partnership with the institute is one of the most comprehensive of any school in the country. But this was our first program with little kids.” The project, which concluded in early November, featured Brown in several one-hour workshops with small groups and staffers from the Child Development Center.

Adapting the institute’s mission to the pre-kindergarten set posed interesting challenges. “We always model teaching units around a work of art,” says Brown. “The goal is for kids to have a charged experience of the performance, something deeper than ‘I liked it.’” In this case, he was preparing his students to watch the Seán Curran Company, a contemporary troupe, present “Percussion Pieces.”

Instead of explaining the notion of planned, deliberate movements, Brown prompted the children to create their own. Each boy and girl had a chance to come up with a gesture—walking backwards, waving hands, pivoting around for the others to copy. Next, Brown encouraged everyone to isolate a single part of the body and make it move to the music he’d queued up on his CD player.

Finally, the participants were ready for an improvised show that illustrated the jobs of performers and audience members. Four at a time, the kids jumped, swirled, and twirled, while their peers watched from the floor. After each group bowed to warm applause, Brown led a brief discussion. “Was the dance fast or slow?” he asked. “High or low?” Then, like the cast and ticket holders at a revival of Hair, everyone got to their feet for a few excited wriggles before pulling on their shoes and heading to the door.