Arts Learning
ACHF Arts Education
Young Dance will offer 75 participants opportunities to participate in dance learning activities at five different venues. Participants will demonstrate their learning in performances, introducing audiences to integrated dance at these five different venues. We will track attendance in our classes; teachers will document concepts covered in classes and articulate how those concepts are demonstrated through performance; and each class will culminate in a public showing.
Through All Abilities Dancing, Young Dance branches out in the exploration of dance, and in the diversity of the individuals who participate in the classes and come to the performances. The 15-20 participants in the All Abilities Dancing Level Two class are individuals with and without disabilities, ranging in age from 12 – 50, (majority between 12-22), 40% male, and no single racial group is a majority. This is a model of diversity we would like to emulate throughout our organization. We look to the ways that we do outreach, engage the community for feedback, develop curriculum and create partnerships with All Abilities Dancing to inform programming throughout Young Dance. We encountered different successes and challenges with the communities we reached through our partnerships. As mentioned above, the process of setting up classes at Hennepin County Home School took much longer than we anticipated, so we were not able to run as many classes as we had planned. However, the relationship that is now established is much deeper, with Young Dance staff better trained to teach the classes and HCHS staff have a more thorough understanding of the goals of the classes. Through this partnership we are currently poised to continue classes through the summer and next school year, with funding provided, in part, from Hennepin County. In addition to Dowling School, we were able to do after school classes at Marcy Open School, which has a significant populations of students on the autism spectrum. The dance specialist at Roosevelt High School felt that the Young Dance classes redefined, for her, how to approach dance with her population of students with Developmental and Cognitive delays. On her own, she has pursued more learning opportunities with Young Dance. In turn, her sense of arc over a semester, necessary for school, and her need to be responsive to state standards and evaluation are informing a more clear articulation of curriculum that Young Dance can use for all of our programming. We conducted classes with Lifeworks in the winter of 2016, however due to staffing shifts at both organizations, Young Dance and Lifeworks, the partnership did not resume in the spring and fall. This partnership had started in 2015 and was aligned with Lifeworks goal of integrating their clients into the community, bringing participants to classes that were off sight of their day center. However, holding classes off sight also presented challenges resulting in inconsistent attendance, arrival times and last minute cancellations. When Ms. Pick went on sabbatical, after one session of these classes, the temporary outreach coordinator evaluated that the inconsistencies drained our resources more than the classes benefitted our organization. Lifeworks also had a staffing shift, and the new staff coordinator was not especially interested in the dance programming. Without anyone championing the classes, they were not prioritized for the spring and fall schedule. 20 dancers, with and without disabilities, participated in intermediate-advanced learning opportunities in the Dance for All Abilities class while 60 participants, ages 5-40, were introduced to dance through ongoing classes and partnerships with community organizations. Young Dance teachers expanded their skills for engaging people of varying abilities and experience in dance.
Other, local or private