Program
Abstracts
AESTHETIC CRITICISM IN THE ARTS CLASSROOM
(JULY 9-10)
Dr.
Sydney Walker: Multi-Arts with Big Ideas
The
session opened with the question, Why integrate the arts? A group
discussion of this notion followed with the presentation of an integrated
curriculum model structured around big ideas. Participants explored
the model through interactive activities that addressed such questions
as What are big ideas?, Why are they important for student learning?,
How do they work with integrated curriculum?, and How can they work
with my particular art area? The session layed the foundation for
the participants' work during the rest of the institute. At the
conclusion of the session, participants were familiar with how big
ideas can create meaningful connections for integrating the arts
curriculum and understand a process for making this happen.
Catherine
Hays: Technology in the Arts Classroom
Multimedia
technology can be a valuable tool in the arts classroom; the added
dimension of images, video or audio has the potential to engage
students in new ways, meet the needs of various learning styles,
and provide access to content that might not otherwise be available.
In this two part workshop we looked at strategies for developing
multimedia projects development, finding resources for digital media,
and selecting the appropriate development tool and delivery medium.
Participants gained a stronger sense of the technological resources
available for use in their classrooms through demonstrations and
the exploration of sample projects. In addition, participants worked
collaboratively to develop sample projects based on topical areas
relevant to the institute.
Dr.
Marilyn Stewart: Why Our Questions Matter
The session focused on content and strategies for engaging students
in inquiry-based learning in the arts. Through a series of interactive
activities, participants identified the questions we ask as we create,
perform and respond to works of art. Arts inquiry was shown as grounded
in what ordinary human beings routinely do. Teaching strategies
were offered as ways to help students be deliberate and reflective
arts makers, performers, and responders. This approach to teaching
and learning in the arts highlights the role of the arts within
the human experience and, especially, in the day-to-day lives of
our students. Participants had the opportunity to find references
to this inquiry-based approach in the Maryland State Essential Learning
Outcomes for both High and Middle Schools in their own arts areas.
They also were encouraged to raise questions and offer comments
throughout the session.
GROWING
IN AND ACROSS THE ARTS (July 10-19)
AFRICA
AND ITS INFLUENCE
Music
Performance/Studio Masterclasses
Diali
Djimo Kauyate: West African Drumming Workshop: Djembe &
Doun Doun Drumming. This
workshop allowed participants the opportunity to experience and
learn to play drum rhythms on the Djembe and Doun Doun drums focusing
on the music of Manding West African traditions. Participants
were introduced to the djembe and doun doun drumming techniques
through a multiplicity of rhythmic partners that are used in combination
to make up distinctive rhythmic forms and compositions for the
djembe drum orchestra. Participants also learned about the significance
of rhythms in Manding cultures and the symbolism and values of
the music in its historical, ceremonial and social context in
societies of African people.
Theater
Performance/Studio Masterclasses
Clinton
L. Carbon. Colonial
authorities tried to forbid indigenous performance in Africa because
they considered it pagan and feared its potential for subversion.
Africa has no performance that resembled the forms that European
colonists knew. The tension between the colonialists' heritage
and native indigenous forms created a vigorous and dynamic spectrum
of performance. Africans used an array of performance modes to
avoid the differences of tribal language and the oppression of
governmental official. Performance modes such as audience participation,
dancing, music, song, drumming, storytelling, masks, costumes,
mime, ritual initiation and recitation caused new ays of communicating
and shaped African theater all over the continent. The use of
these forms has had a profound effect on world drama. Participants
discussed the modes of performance, view videotapes, listen to
audiotapes, read samples of African drama and experiment with
African performance modes to create new approaches to production
theater.
Visual
Arts Performance/Studio Masterclasses
Joyce
J. Scott. This
studio experience explores the continuity between thread and needle,
family and fabric, and the African diaspora. Artist Joyce J. Scott
took participants on a journey through the rich dialogue of her
artistic family and the connection of generations with the traditions
of the African diaspora combining the mediums of fabric and beads.
Participants learned how to utilize family and cultural narratives
as material for artistic creation, and will discuss methods for
eliciting these narratives from their students.
JAZZ
IN AMERICA
LECTURE
SESSION I
Dr.
Kip Lornell: Jazz in Twentieth Century American Culture. This
session traced the development of jazz since its birth in the
deep South during the era of Jim Crow. But rather than explore
its history in a chronological fashion-from New Orleans Brass
Bands to present day jazz/pop hybrids--we looked at the intersections
between jazz and important times & figures in American social
history. Three examples of these intersections were Louis Armstrong,
the swing era, and Black Nationalism during the 1960s. They were
investigated via a lecture that will feature numerous video and
audio examples.
LECTURE
SESSION II
Dr.
Kip Lornell: Vernacular Black Music in Washington, D.C.
Washington,
D.C. is a city divided largely along racial and economic lives.
Most people know Washington as a Federal enclave that attracts
millions of tourists who come to visit the Mall, the White House,
and the City's various monuments. But there is also D.C., home
to nearly 400,000 African Americans, who are largely invisible
to most tourists. Black Americans in D.C. have developed one unique
form of popular music (go go) as well as helping to promote "shout
bands" (a style of Pentecostal sacred music) to a high level.
This course will explore the history and significance of these
two musical forms in our Nation's Capital.
Music
Performance/Studio Masterclasses
Chris
Vadala: Back to the Basics! This
session consisted of a concise seminar highlighting one of the
key elements of the jazz tradition. The presentation focused on
live and recorded examples with class participation (bring instruments,
piano, amps & drum set provided) as well as an overview of
current pedagogical materials and approaches.
Theater
Performance/Studio Masterclasses
Living
Stage/Oran Sandel. This
was an interactive workshop correlating improvisational theatrical
technique and the improvisational nature of Jazz. This was an
opportunity for teachers to share ideas about what theater and
music is for them, as well as to experience the aesthetics of
jazz through voice and movement.
Visual
Arts Performance/Studio Masterclasses
Al
Smith: A Visual Jazz Workshop. This
session was an exploration into the spacial perception of music
(rhythmic figures, melody lines, pitch, volume, tone color, pattern,
texture, architectural structures and others) as subject matter
for painting. In counterpoint, the time valued process of scanning
the deep, shallow, and decorative space of the picture plane is
metaphorically presented to create the duration feel of quarter,
eighth, and sixteenth-notes respectively. As a bridge between
seeing and hearing, the organizational principles of visual design
and music theory are compared. A jazz aesthetic concept was presented
by encouraging the participants to perform collaboratively. Through
the technique of collage, participants can "share language",
"exchange riffs in the manner of call and response"
and practice "listening energy." Like a jazz combo,
the form of collage provided for the student's quick response,
individual expression, while simultaneously being responsible
for the total art work.
CONSIDERING
THE POSTMODERN
Lecture
Session
Dr.
Greg Metcalf: Aesthetics of the Postmodern.
Postmodernism
is something everyone knows about but everyone seems to know it
to be something different. At a simple level, a collapse of traditional
categories and boundaries is an essential part of the postmodern
experience, but the apparent chaos often seems more trouble than
it is worth. This lecture was intended to provide a tour through
the confusion regarding postmodern thought and provide basic signposts
as well as pointing out productive paths for later pursuit by
teachers and students. The central themes covered were: 1) the
idea of postmodernism; its precedents, prevalent definitions,
and the relationship of postmodernist art and culture; 2) the
critical theorists of postmodernism; their essential ideas, and
the postmodernist erasure of the line between artist and critic;
3) a consideration of what postmodern art looks like and what
it is, with examples from a range of media, old and new; 4) the
role of computer and video, both as media for the creation of
postmodern art and as creators of the postmodern condition; and
5) the troublesome issue of ambiguity and the different experience
of postmodernism for teachers and students.
Music
Performance/Studio Masterclasses
Dr.
Robert Gibson: Dream Music: A Composer's View of Computer-Generated
Sound. Composer
Robert Gibson, who has worked with computer applications for music
composition since 1986, demonstrated and discussed various software
applications that he used in the composition of Mist (1995/97),
a work for double bass and computer-generated sound. Mr. Gibson
views these applications as metaphors for the way composers think
about sound created by the computer. The lecture/demonstration
included applications for sound synthesis (Csound), digital editing
(Sound Designer and Pro Tools), and digital signal processing
(Hyperprism). In addition to these professional-level applications,
alternative resources for the classroom that are either free or
low-priced shareware available on the web were included in the
discussion.
Theater
Performance/Studio Masterclasses
Tony
Tsendeas: The Postmodern, the Theater and the Director: or
"Theater As Alchemy." This
session was essentially a director's view on Theater and the Postmodern.
It was therefore a subjective assessment garnered by varied professional
theatrical experiences. The format was lecture/discussion &
demonstration, ending with the group "getting on its feet"
and participating in theater games and exercises. This provided
an additional tangible by-product of teachers learning new games
& exercises, which they can then take back to school. The
session will first quickly define elements of postmodernism in
The Arts to create a working theory. And in a very post modern
move, also explored while some caveats about using "post
modern" as a designation of a discernible style. 20th Century
Theater was traced focusing on two "theatrical points of
view"-Subjectivity and Objectivity. We investigated the intended
audience experience for each point of view, and how these points
of view have manifested themselves in a variety of styles. Contemporary
examples of Postmodernism at work in the theater will be sighted,
focusing on two performance pieces by Action Theater. Finally,
discussion of "Theater as Alchemy," a theory for a practical
approach to making theater. This approach was considered within
the context of post modern theory.
Visual
Arts Performance/Studio Masterclasses
Dr.
Greg Metcalf. In
this studio session we attempted to apply some of the core concepts
of postmodernism to the visual arts. With images of recognized
postmodern visual artists as the point of departure, participants
will create simple artworks. The conceptual basis of the projects
will be collage and bricollage (two- or three-dimensions), working
with the ideas of 1) creating new or multiple meanings through
the juxtaposition of source materials, 2) creating new or multiple
meanings through the transformation of source materials, and 3)
the creation of nontraditional aesthetics through the juxtaposition
of media and/or technique. Actual projects will be based in the
simplest mediatransfer--printing and xeroxing, cut-and-paste collage
and glue assemblage, graphite and paints--the projects can be
easily translated and applied to multimedia, video and computer
projects if such resources are available to students in the schools.
Attention was also paid to practical issues of assigning and evaluating
these projects in the classroom setting.
Sponsored by The
Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, The
Center for Renaissance and Baroque
Studies, and the Maryland
State Department of Education.
|