"All the heart wants is to be called again." Julia Alvarez

Monday, February 1, 2010

PB&J, Funny boys and courageous children

Quote for the day : “I just act like an idiot and they love it” Phillipe

We got to Los Dominguez School, going up a newly paved road past little pink and blue houses with concrete bridges over trash-filled rivulets. Past abuelas and naked babies, men on motoconchos, men standing in front of stores, women putting laundry out. Los Dominguez was a set of two-story yellow concrete buildings and a few small bungalows. We set up lunch in the kindergarten classroom—PB&J sandwiches, grapes, cheesesticks, oranges and juice boxes—so appropriate to the space. We met Andrew, or Andres, a peace corps worker fresh from a college in Nebraska, but who had been born in Brazil. He is working with the Vermont Institute on the Carribean on the Healthy Kids, Healthy Neighborhoods program. The kids in the program have already gone to city hall, en masse, with a petition for their local counselors. If you give us trash bags, we will collect all the trash on Friday morning, then you (the gov’t) will send a pick-up truck on Friday afternoon to collect it all. No mas basura—no more trash.

When it was close to time we walked up the hill to a little concrete building with a 10x12 concrete patio. Our dance space. OK. We had to wait some time for the kids to be collected and brought up the hill. It was a rough start, since the kids dribbled in, and were VERY shy about this whole process. I was a nervous wreck thinking this could all be a mess. Short confab with Penny then Sophie saved the day with the suggestion of playing the name game to get us started. We had to start and get them moving or it would be a no-go. In the game you say your name and do a movement, then the group repeats your name and gesture. When we got to the first child, Angelina, she laughed and covered her face and Liz repeated the movement next to her, moving the game along, breaking the ice, allowing the kids to do anything.

More kids came, we went through some more warm-up and picked up some speed. Next was taking 4 words about your neighborhood and turning them into movement. We talked a little about making movement bigger, smaller, faster, slower, trying to get them a little bit away from miming and literal movement. They were really getting it, and also acquiring an audience, which was both good and bad. As Christian pointed out later, whether people were doing or watching they were seeing something new, something that seemed slightly silly but that was interesting, with ideas. I split them into groups to do a short piece on their barrio, or neighborhood. To create movement about one place in the neighborhood, the good and the bad, and/or something they wanted to change. The Midd dancers worked in pairs with their groups, Spanish speakers in each pair. There were four groups that did work, respectively, based on cleaning up the beach, school, a park to play sports and a new park. There were shapes and sounds, gestures enormous y pequeno. Cat and Christian had a little bit of a tough group. One girl was determined to not look foolish in front of a group of heckling 14 year old boys, so she made faces, made fun of the process at certain points. The other kids in her group tried to ignore her, but it was hard. But Christian gave her credit for staying when she really wanted to go. Phillipe’s group thought he was hilarious when he became the pelota in a game of ball and stick. Sophie and Jeremy cleaned up the beach and Sarah and Alex built a new park.

The Midd Students were so good. Really, I was impressed. They just dug in and worked to incorporate everyone, listening, organizing, making a connection.

After the showing, Maelin, Moreno’s daughter, showed us, along with Rosalin and some other kids, their dance for Carnivale, although it looked different from the other day. Then Moreno went and got the costume and she did it all again for us. It was white pants and shirt, the pants covered in day glo green shells, sewn by hand. She had a kerchief on her head, tied African style, a poncho/cape with drawings influenced by the other influences on Dominican culture—Spain and Taino, the indigenous people of Hispanola. It was gorgeous. Then Angelina said thank you for coming and showing us this dance, how now she knows how beautiful the dance is and how she can use it to speak. Well, job done! We walked down the hill, Moreno pushed a couple of boys off his moto and headed down as well to organize moto conchos for the Company to get back to the hotel. I was unbelievably nervous about this teaching experience, even though I have done it a thousand times, and having a fairly successful result was a huge weight off.

We went back to the Meeting place after dinner and Balsamo and Middlebury rehearsed together again. The company blocked out the KIDZ piece and Nic and I ran to Polanco to get the blog post for Tuesday up, check email, update Facebook. Christian had a long talk with Kirsi, a young woman in Balsamo, while the quintet was blocked for the 9 x 20’ stage, which is a quarter the size of the Middlebury stage. They talked about Middlebury, the Language schools, opportunities for education in the U.S. She was pretty psyched to hear Julia Alvarez was at Middlebury. Arisleyda and Jen did find some mats that could get taped down in a narrow lane in front of the stage, and somehow they got all the movement to fit. There is a lot of inverted work in the quintet, or NUNOZ piece, so reconstructing carefully took some time.

… Then dinner at 9:00 at a new restaurant to us, Portofino. Nicole, Phillipe, Alex and I shared a table. “Oh, this is the party table,” said Alex. But we behaved, mostly, well we were having a good time anyway. I had some great fish and rice, perfect. Back to the hotel for a long chat with Penny before bed. We have fallen into this habit of rehashing the day, as well as discussing the larger ramifications of how the experience is going, how the company is handling everything, and the hilarious moments of the day.

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