EDUCATOR GUIDE Story Theme: The Frontiers of Dance Subject: AXIS Dance Company Discipline: Dance SECTION I – OVERVIEW .....................................................................................................................2 EPISODE THEME SUBJECT CURRICULUM CONNECTIONS OBJECTIVE STORY SYNOPSIS INSTRUCTIONAL OBJECTIVES INSTRUCTIONAL STRATEGIES EQUIPMENT NEEDED MATERIALS NEEDED INTELLIGENCES ADDRESSED SECTION II – CONTENT/CONTEXT ..................................................................................................3 CONTENT OVERVIEW THE BIG PICTURE RESOURCES – TEXTS & ARTICLES RESOURCES – WEB SITES VIDEO RESOURCES BAY AREA FIELD TRIPS SECTION III – VOCABULARY.............................................................................................................8 SECTION IV – ENGAGING WITH SPARK ...................................................................................... 10 AXIS Dance Company members rehearse a new production. Still image from SPARK story, January 2004. SECTION I – OVERVIEW EPISODE THEME INSTRUCTIONAL STRATEGIES The Frontiers of Dance Individual and group research Individual and group exercises SUBJECT Oral presentation of research results and findings AXIS Dance Company Group written research materials Group discussions GRADE RANGES K-12 & Post-secondary EQUIPMENT NEEDED CURRICULUM CONNECTIONS SPARK story about AXIS Dance Company on DVD Dance, Music & Science or VHS and related equipment Computer with Internet access, navigation software, speakers and a sounds card, and color printer OBJECTIVE Audio recording and playback device (tape cassette To introduce students to AXIS Dance Company – a player, CD player-burner, computer audio company of dancers with and without disabilities – program, etc.) and their collaborative development process of a new integrated dance piece called “Dust.” Students will also learn about the field of integrated dance MATERIALS NEEDED and the history of integrated dance and theatre. Access to libraries with up-to-date collections of periodicals, books, and research papers Pencils, pens, and paper STORY SYNOPSIS AXIS Dance Company has a long history of delivering performances that stun and delight, INTELLIGENCES ADDRESSED combining the work of dancers with and without Interpersonal - awareness of others’ feelings, physical disabilities. This season marks the world emotions, goals, motivations premiere of a new work by well-known Intrapersonal - awareness of one’s own feelings, choreographer Victoria Marks called “Dust,” a emotions, goals, motivations provocative choreographic portrait of AXIS that Bodily-Kinesthetic - the ability to use one’s mind to challenges the viewer's assumptions about each of control one’s bodily movements the performers. SPARK is backstage throughout the Musical - the ability to read, understand, and process, from first tentative improvisation to compose pitches, tones, and rhythms opening night. See more information on INSTRUCTIONAL OBJECTIVES Multiple Intelligences at www.kqed.org/spark/education. Introduce students to integrated dance Challenge student assumptions of what dance is and who can participate Introduce students to dance choreography SPAR K Educator Guide – AXIS Dance Company 2 SECTION II – CONTENT/CONTEXT CONTENT OVERVIEW Since 1987, AXIS Dance Company has created an the themes of desire and longing emerge - desire in exciting body of work developed by dancers with terms of space and the need to move forward, and and without disabilities. The company has become longing in terms of physical attraction and how the internationally recognized for its high artistic and gravitational pull between them as dancers inspires educational standards and for being on the cutting interesting dance dynamics. edge of physically integrated dance. Under Artistic Direction of Judith Smith, the 10-member company has developed a powerful repertory that includes works by Bill T. Jones, Joe Goode, Joanna Haigood, and Victoria Marks, as well as AXIS company members. In the Spark story “Bodies in Motion,” AXIS Dance Company members work diligently on a new work directed by choreographer and UCLA faculty Victoria Marks. Viewers gain insight into the artistic process of dance choreography and hear from dancers, the choreographer, the musical composer, and a dance critic on the trials of creating new work and the important role that AXIS serves in AXIS Dance Company members working on their new dance challenging society’s assumptions about disabilities. performance called “Dust” at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Still image from SPARK story, January 2004. One of only a few companies of its kind, AXIS Dance Company is still somewhat on the frontier of the After several months, the company moves to Yerba dance world. Like any professional group they are Buena Center for the Arts. As recipients of the Wattis always striving for excellence, creating performances Artists-in-Residence Award, the company has been that are poignant and whose content has weight and given highly prized rehearsal time in the Center’s humor. They challenge our perceptions about what 300-seat professional theatre. The new piece has dance is and can be, about what is beautiful and not, developed, and now the dancers set to work on small and about disability without allowing it to be the vignettes that will eventually assembled into one focus of the dance except to open people’s minds to coherent piece. Even with 6 months of preparations, possibilities of what we are capable of, including our the creative process is lengthy, and two weeks before strengths and weaknesses. As theater and society opening night, the piece has no ending or title and become more accessible, integrated dance groups will the musical score is unfinished. In more traditional probably be more prevalent and future generations dance companies, dances are set to a completed will find it easier to participate in this art form. musical score. In the organic process used by AXIS, composer Eve Beglarian is able to finish her score With six months between first rehearsal and opening while watching the dancers, incorporating all the night of their new work, the members of AXIS spend sounds of the movement in the final composition, a week improvising together to explore how they even the hums and clicks of the wheelchairs. And, at interact as dancers, develop different themes and long last, the ensemble finds a title for its ideas that will inform their movements. Over time, collaborative work – “Dust.” SPAR K Educator Guide – AXIS Dance Company 3 In addition to their professional performances, AXIS a number of years, both Disability Theatre and Dance Company also has an educational outreach Physically Integrated Dance began to enjoy more program designed to bring physically integrated recognition around the same time, together striving dance education directly to the community called to raise awareness about people living with Dance Access, a team of 8 teaching artists (5 with disabilities as artists within their own right. disabilities) led by Education Director Alisa Rasera. Combined with physically integrated dance, the Dance Access offers performances, assemblies, number of physically integrated performance groups workshops, lecture-demonstrations, in-school is still in the dozens. residencies, and after-school programs to schools and communities around the Bay Area. During a similar movement in the United States, a number of pioneering groups developed throughout the 1980s. Some of these groups explored contact THE BIG PICTURE improvisation – the improvisation of dance and In the 1980s, a number of professional dance theatre pieces through the contact between people companies emerged in the United States and Europe with and without disabilities – while others including dancers and actors with and without approached integrated dance as a theatre art, such as disabilities. These companies set vital precedents for Bethune Theatredance in Los Angeles (1979) and physically integrated performing companies – Dancing Wheels (1982). These groups and others like companies in which people with and without them challenged the exclusion of the disabled body disabilities were equal collaborators. While the from Western dance traditions, and have effectively movement has caught on, even today there a few changed the perspective of dance as an art form only dozen physically integrated dance companies across for able-bodied people. the world. These companies and other disability awareness and support organizations offer an ever- By comparison, 8.6% of American men and 8.95% of growing array of opportunities for people with American women are believed to be living with a disabilities to have access to and participate in the disability. A study of Disability in the United States arts through performance, workshops, and classes. conducted by the University of California at San Francisco in May 1993 concluded that 13.2 million Americans over the age of 16 had some difficulty in 1 mobility and self-care. By comparison, the number of physically integrated performing companies in the United States is still very, very small. As one of the ever-growing number of integrated dance companies operating nationally and internationally, AXIS Dance Company is considered one of the few groups at the forefront of the field, working with internationally renowned choreographers to create original material that is artistically excellent and challenging. What differentiates AXIS and similar groups such as CandoCo. is the commitment