145. Cadence Company – Creative Youth Ensemble
Talking Hands Talking Feet is forming an experimental performing arts guild in Santa Fe, New Mexico. It’s called “Cadence Company”. It is a creative youth ensemble for students ages 13 to 18. It’s first 2015 summer camp just concluded with a powerful and promising performance.
Cadence Company is a multi-modal creative arts ensemble. It incorporates theater and storytelling, music and rhythm, song and verse, movement and dance, video and multi-media visual arts…into a cohesive message of hope and purpose…with a lot of humor along the way.
The five day camp is a process-oriented versatility training in many art forms leading to an experimental interactive performance at the end of the week.
It is about giving young lives the tools to express themselves with clarity and confidence…as individuals and in group ensemble. It involves a lot of self-discovery and collaboration in a safe ecology where experimentation and mistakes are encouraged without fear of judgment.
It is also about young lives creating their own fun.
The greater vision of Cadence Company is to foster an experimental performing arts guild in Santa Fe where teens create their own original productions and perform them as service projects in schools and in the greater community. It is about young lives inspiring and motivating each other to engage the world with creative vision and versatility, springing from a deep inner confidence.
The process of coming to a message itself is extraordinary. Cadence Company has developed what are called “Word Webs” which engage agile minds in a passionate dialectic around world challenges and their potential solutions…creating verse, story, song and image that convey an evocative, constructive message.
“We never contrive or force the message,” says Melanie Zeir, cofounder of Talking Hands Talking Feet, “It is an organic process that has its own timings. Students of public schools are so accustomed to being told what the issues and solutions are. When they come to us, it is such a liberation for their natural intelligence and problem solving creativity. This is a way for them to find their own minds, their own voice.”
Many young people are instinctively looking for creative community service opportunities with meaning and purpose. The vision of Cadence Company is to create and perform insightful messages through multiple art forms showing ways to rise to the challenges facing us all in our times.
The result at the end of the week is pure art. This first performance was a combination of improvisation along with rehearsed pieces, integrating song, story, dance, rhythm and music conveying a strong message about bridging the divides of fear and ignorance in honor of our deep humanity.
The proof of the message though, is in the genuine hope and compassion expressed by these young lives.
~PAZ
