Dino-Light Mark Frohna Florence Montmare Florence Mark Frohna Mark Frohna Mark Frohna
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2019/20 DINO-LIGHT MARK FROHNA FLORENCE MONTMARE FLORENCE MARK FROHNA MARK FROHNA MARK FROHNA MARK FROHNA SHAREN BRANFORD ONSTAGE RESOURCE GUIDE • OVERTURE.ORG/ONSTAGE Overture Center for the Arts fills a city block in downtown Madison with ABOUT world-class venues for the performing and visual arts. Made possible by an OVERTURE CENTER extraordinary gift from Madison businessman W. Jerome Frautschi, the center presents the highest-quality arts and entertainment programming in FOR THE ARTS a wide variety of disciplines for diverse audiences. Offerings include performances by acclaimed classical, jazz, pop, and folk performers; touring Broadway musicals; quality children’s entertainment; and world-class ballet, modern and jazz dance. Overture Center’s extensive outreach and educational programs serve thousands of Madison-area residents annually, including youth, older adults, people with limited financial resources and people with disabilities. The center is also home to ten independent resident organizations. Internationally renowned architect Cesar Pelli designed the center to RESIDENT provide the best possible environment for artists and audiences, as well as ORGANIZATIONS to complement Madison’s urban environment. Performance spaces range Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society from the spectacular 2,250-seat Overture Hall to the casual and intimate Children's Theater of Madison Rotunda Stage. The renovated Capitol Theater seats approximately 1,110, Forward Theater Company and The Playhouse seats 350. In addition, three multi-purpose spaces Kanopy Dance Company provide flexible performance, meeting and rehearsal facilities. Overture Li Chiao-Ping Dance Company Center also features several art exhibit spaces. Overture Galleries I, II and Madison Ballet III display works by Dane County artists. The Playhouse Gallery features Madison Opera regional artists with an emphasis on collaborations with local organizations. Madison Symphony Orchestra The Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters’ Watrous Gallery Wisconsin Academy’s James Watrous Gallery displays works by Wisconsin artists, and the Madison Museum of Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra Contemporary Art offers works by national and international artists. RESOURCE GUIDE CREDITS Executive Editor Meri Rose Ekberg Writer/Designer Danielle Dresden Dino-Light Overture Center for the Arts – OnStage 1 Dear Teachers, In this resource guide you will find valuable information to help you apply academic goals to your students’ performance experience. We have included suggestions for activities which can help you prepare students to see this performance, ideas for follow-up activities, and additional resources you can access on the web. Along with these activities and resources, we’ve also included the applicable Wisconsin Academic Standards in order to help you align the experience with your curriculum requirements. This Educator’s Resource Guide is designed to: • Extend the scholastic impact of the performance by providing discussion ideas, activities and reading to promote learning across the curriculum; • Promote arts literacy by expanding students’ knowledge of music, science, storytelling and theatre; • Illustrate that the arts are a legacy reflecting the values, customs, beliefs, expressions and reflections of a culture; Dino-Light • Use the arts to teach about the cultures of other people and to celebrate students’ own heritage through self-reflection; Table of Contents • Maximize students’ enjoyment and appreciation of the About Dino-Light & Lightwire Theater ....... 2 performance. How Do They Do That? ...........................3 We hope the performance and this resource guide will provide you and your students with opportunities to integrate art learning in Puppetry & Facts About the Show .............4 your curricula, expanding it in new and enriching ways. Resources ...............................................5 Enjoy the Show! Learning Activity: Electric Circuit ...........6-9 Learning Activity: Getting Colorful ......10-11 Curriculum Categories Academic Standards .............................. 12 Arts Social Emotional Science About Live Performance ........................ 13 We want your feedback! OnStage performances can be evaluated online! Evaluations are vital to the funding of this program. Your feedback educates us about the ways the program is utilized and we often implement your suggestions. Survey:https://form.jotform.com/91974450543260 Dino-Light Overture Center for the Arts – OnStage 2 About Dino-Light Dino-Light Part light show, part dance theater, Dino-Light, a feet of electroluminescent wire, and Dino-Light becomes Lightwire Theater production, really shows what it means a one of a kind feast for the senses. to light up the stage. Audiences around the world have thrilled to Dino-Light’s dazzling blend of puppetry, About Lightwire Theater technology, and dance, complete with echoes of Jurassic Lightwire Theater was founded by Ian Carney and Park and Star Wars. Corbin Popp who met when they were both dancing in This glow in the dark production tells the story of Darwin, Twyla Tharp’s Broadway show Movin’ Out. Discovering a friendly dinosaur who wanders way from his home with they were both interested in technology and the arts, Professor Henslow, the scientist who created him and Corbin introduced Ian to EL wire and the idea for their made sure to give him a heart. creative partnership was born. Their wives, Eleanor Carney and Whitney Popp (who are also dancers), soon Darwin’s journey takes him into a magical world of joined them in creating this fusion of high-tech, puppetry, creatures like Brutus the red dinosaur, Verla the Ostrich, and dance. and Peche the Fish. These characters light up Darwin’s world both literally and figuratively by helping him The company went on to become semi-finalists an discover the true meaning of love. America’s Got Talent and win Tru TV’s Fake Off. Based in New Orleans, their repertoire includes five full shows Like a ballet, Dino-Light tells a story, communicates and they tour around the world from Hong Kong to Abu feelings, and creates humor through movement. Add in Dhabi and beyond. tightly synced music and sound cues, plus about 2,000 Dino-Light Overture Center for the Arts – OnStage 3 How Do They Do That? More About Dino-Light The secret to the high-tech puppets that come to life in Dino-Light is electroluminescent wire (EL Wire). EL wire is very flexible, and it doesn’t get hot when electricity passes through it. Instead, it just lights up and looks like neon. The lights in a car’s instrument panel are another example of electroluminescence in action. Creating the puppets requires a mixture of artistic and technological skills, plus a lot of time. It takes about 200 hours of work to create just one of the characters featured in Dino-Light. Putting the whole show together took four years. Designers use recycled materials like skateboard wheels, Paint poles, and backpacks to build the puppet frames, which are then covered with black cloth and outlined with EL wire. The EL wire is attached to battery packs the performers wear. That’s how the puppets light up. Performers dress in black, so they will blend into the black background and the audience will only see the glowing EL outlines of the constructed characters. The puppets Lightwire Theater have to be light and flexible enough that the performers can dance, run, and jump while wearing them, but they also have to be strong enough to stand up to several Choreographing Dino-Light presented the following performances and traveling around the world. special challenges: Two different kinds of puppets are used inDino-Light ; • Everything looks two-dimensional, due to the those performers wear, like the dinosaur costumes, and effect of light shining on a black background those the performers manipulate, like the fish. The props • The performers can’t move in front of each other, used in this show are also lined with EL wire, so they glow because if they did, backlighting would reveal in the dark, too, as the performers move them in space. them to the audience • Because of how they were built, some characters, like the dinosaurs, can only move one way A Bit About Batteries Batteries are an essential part of modern life, but they’ve been around longer than you might think. An Italian physicist named Alessandro Volta is credited with inventing the first battery in 1799, but archeologists have found traces of what might have been ancient batteries that date back to 200 B.C. Working as a class, try making a list of all the different things you use all the time that run on batteries. Now try to guess how many batteries Americans buy each year. (The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that it’s nearly 3 billion!) Dino-Light Overture Center for the Arts – OnStage 4 Photo by Stephen Charles Nicholson Puppetry The Encyclopedia Britannica defines puppetry as “the Facts About the Show making and manipulation of puppets for use in some kind of theatrical show. A puppet is a figure—human, animal, • It takes 250 batteries to run Dino-Light. The or abstract in form—that is moved by human, and not company uses AA and 9v batteries. mechanical, aid.” • There is a tradition on Broadway to only use a Humans have been using objects to tell stories for more battery in one performance, even though they than 3,000 years, which makes puppetry one of the could be used for more. To eliminate this waste, world’s oldest art forms. From Ancient Egypt to Sesame Dino-Light uses these Broadway veterans in its Street, puppets of all kinds have been part of religious performances. ceremonies, morality plays, and the performing arts. • To hold the creatures featured in Dino-Light, Puppets can be moved in different ways. Puppeteers, the company uses bike racks. people who work puppets, may use strings, sticks, their hands, or their whole bodies to make puppets appear • Other key supplies include a hot glue gun, to come to life. Sometimes it can take more than one solder iron, zip ties, battery tester, spare battery puppeteer to handle a puppet.