Philadelphia Dance Projects

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If we can get adolescents to invent movement and to compose dances, we are helping them to succeed at the fundamental task of their life stage —the task of developing identity. Dance study is particularly suited to identity-creation, especially in light of current neuroscience. Brain researchers now know that the act of moving changes the brain by “growing” receptor sites for neurotransmitters. Adolescent movers are thus creating themselves as they move.

This workshop will suggest strategies for moving middle and high school students towards movement invention. It will suggest ways for taking kids who have narrow expectations of dance class and moving them into creative process. We will start with encouraging simple creative choices and move towards the more complex ones that culminate in dance making. The intention is that Dance Taggers leave with stimulating thoughts about what to do on Monday and the next day and the next.

Artists

Martie Barylick, CMA

Martie Barylick founded the PACE Program, an integrated performing arts elective program at Mamaroneck High School in NY in 1975 and taught there until 2011. The program was named by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund as one of the ten best public school arts programs in the country. She currently teaches in the Depart-ment of Dance at Mason Gross School of the Arts in Rutgers University. A graduate of Brown University, she is also a Certified Movement Analyst. She has taught at the Laban Institute in New York City, has been a consultant to the Pittsburgh school system, has provided professional development for teachers in New York and Maryland, and is currently on the faculty at the Dance Education Lab in New York. She has published articles in Daedalus, Movement Studies, and the Journal of Dance Education. A member of the National Dance Education Organization since its inception, she has served on its board of directors.