130. Showtime
When the families of 70 children show up for a Talking Hands Talking Feet performance, magic happens. May 2014’s end of year performance entitled “Wild and Free” found a new threshold in what’s possible for a children’s integrated arts program.
As an educator you can implement Songs To Educate content as a performing arts program in your school. Most of the songs are available- performance ready, without the vocals so that the children can sing the songs.
It began with a question:
How do we introduce six and seven year olds to the fact of “endangered species”? This is the challenge embraced by an original curriculum based performing arts program called “Wild and Free”.
“Wild and Free” springs from the understanding that children are closer with the planet, closer to the primordial language of all sentient beings, from crickets to crocodiles. To be a child, in part, is to be entwined in the web of life, imbued with a sense of wonder, magic and connection to everything. Why so many ‘grown ups’ move away from an intimate courtship with all living things – is another question.
At the end of a twelve week journey through song, story, movement, mimicry and theater into the inner and outer life of animals, their habits and habitats, the children celebrate and share what they have learned in a special show.
By giving this performance, the children contage the audience with an integrated sentiment and connection with the planet we live in.
“Showtime” can be a form of ceremony, an uplifting alignment, a gift of inspiration, an enhancement to the inner lives of the audience. Yes, children dancing and singing enthusiastically would melt any audience. But sometimes, just sometimes, a performance can push back the world for just a little while, suspending the apparent laws of time and space so that something timeless and transcendent can happen.
That’s what happened in “Wild and Free”.
In Talking Hands Talking Feet performance training we use the phrase “No Judgement Zone”. We are passionately defiant against the performance culture of perfection, superficial ego promotion and competition, wherein ‘form’ is everything.
Form is not everything. Repetition and imitation of form are valid training tools, not finished products. But if there’s no essence content, no deeper value, no service, then what’s the point?
“Wild and Free” broke through because the children unabashedly expressed their love and empathy for the innocent creatures of the earth whose futures are threatened by the imbalances caused by human behavior. They “spoke” for that which cannot speak for itself. Sometimes ‘truth’ comes shining through from the least expected sources.
~PAZ
