Education Outreach
OAC Artist in Education Project student
Our wish is to facilitate shared creative experiences for individuals to explore communication and expression through performative art forms. Physical inhibition is sometimes a barrier for people who are new to dance as a form of emotional expression and physical engagement. As educators we commit ourselves to values that support and encourage listening, willingness to try and respect for others, for the process and for one’s self. We encourage expression from individual voices, nurture participants’ desire to try, and teach skills to communicate ideas clearly. Our foremost challenge is to provide a safe and supportive environment for individuals to explore pure expression, connectivity, communication and to cultivate attention.
Ontario Arts Council Artist in Education Projects
Supported by the Ontario Arts Council, these collaborative, expressive movement workshops are facilitated by Andrea Nann for students Grades 3-12 in schools across the province. One of these highly successful projects is SolarDance where students from Regent Park/Cabbagetown/St. James Town schools take part in a series of workshops held at Canadian Contemporary Dance Theatre.
“Andrea’s collaborative approach has fulfilled and enhanced the arts curriculum at Montrose … I have literally been astounded by the work she has done with our students.” - Susan Wieler, Montrose Public School, Toronto, ON
engageARTS Project for Toronto District School Board
A series of workshops for Public School students and teachers exploring the themes of a storybook through expressive movement, observation, cooperation, action and reflection.
Dreamwalker Dance Company is partnering with with River Run Centre in Guelph, Brock University’s Centre for the Arts in St Catharines and the City of Kingston.
Inspired by Dreamwalker’s widely successful multi-arts festival, The Whole Shebang, this exciting new series of collaborative workshops connects local artists working in visual arts, film, new media, music, literary arts, theatre, dance and design.
Follow these unique multi-arts exchanges on our blog.
Join us in for a free public showing of our work together in Guelph on April 18, St. Catharines on April 24 at 5:30pm at the Sean O’Sullivan Theatre and Kingston on June 27, details TBC.
Photo of Guelph Shebang by Alex Gobbi
Actions of Compassion – Embodying The Language of Dance is a movement based education model developed by Andrea Nann. The goal of this practice is to provide participants with an open creative platform and basic skills and tools to physically explore and express some of the myriad feelings and responses they may have as they become more aware of themselves and the world around them. Andrea Nann guides participants through a physical warm up and into a comprehensive series of shared movement experiences that stimulate the imagination and sensorial perception, and aim to cultivate and develop feelings of inclusiveness, trust, respect, awareness, empathy and compassion for oneself, and for the individual members that make up every group.
Aspects of this model have been incorporated into workshops for Canadian Contemporary Dance Theatre’s Solar Dance youth education program in partnership with Toronto District School Board; workshops for school-age youth supported by Ontario Arts Council Artist in Education Program; workshops for senior citizens at Blackcreek Community Health Centre;
and workshops for Te Amim, Tolerance Education Through the Arts.
Statement from the Andrea:
My artistic practice involves questioning, understanding, challenging and communicating life experiences through gestures and movements of the body – through dance. This education model is designed to inspire participants to access personal experiences, concepts and ideas through memory and imagination. I have developed strategies for participants to observe, discover and explore, and then create a seemingly simplistic yet potent movement vocabulary that relates to the world around them. Partipants become active in the shaping and physical expression of their own ideas and experiences. Together we explore connections with one another through movement and physical relationships, through sharing in states of vulnerability, subtlety, stillness, emotion, and through celebrating and appreciating the unfolding of something wondrous, of something unknown, of something amazing that we experience when we give ourselves over to sharing within a group.
Workshop Led by Andrea Nann
What Moves You? Exploring Expressive Gesture and Collaborative Practices in Choreographic Creation My artistic practice is collaborative and process driven and involves diving deeply into my own life experiences while working with others to observe, listen, explore, discover, share, move, feel and create together I am inspired to ask myself the question, ‘What moves me?’ and to elevate this into a shared creative experience. Class begins with group warm up that leads directly into an intensive independent creative process to craft individual expressive gestural phrases. We will then move into partners or small groups to develop collaborative/cooperative creative relationships by sharing and expanding our personal expressive gesture phrases into collaborative movement compositions. During this workshop dancers will be guided through a series of choreographic strategies that accentuate connections and communication through breath, temporal and spatial relationships and peripheral awarenesses. Towards the end of the session each group will have the opportunity to share the work they create.
For Collaborative Movement Workshops with Dreamwalker Dance Company at your school, as well as SPECIAL STUDENT RATES to attend TWS
Performances or Open Rehearsals, please contact Dreamwalker Outreach Co-ordinator Natasha Frid at dreamwalkerdanceoutreach@gmail.com
Initiated in 2004 as a single performance event celebrating the diversity of our creative and cultural community and collaborative artistic relationships The Whole Shebang (TWS) has grown into a month long festival of multi-arts activities that bring together culturally and artistically diverse groups and individuals to interconnect and share in positive and inclusive environments through workshops, classes, public performances, artistic mentorships and more. The pinnacle event of the festival is The Whole Shebang Mainstage Presentation a showcase of short performances by (but not limited to) a diverse gathering of senior, mid-career and emerging dance artists, theatre artists, musicians, filmmakers, poets, visual artists and digital media artists. Our next Festival will take place during April/May 2012.
Designed for high school dance and drama students to assist and inspire students to refine their movement fluency and expression. Dance artist Andrea Nann will lead students into creating and developing collaborative content- driven work.
A guest artist will also participates in the workshop: composers, spoken word artists, visual artists and digital media artists, to provide improvised content, responding to and supporting the students’ work as they move and create.
Please contact Dreamwalker Outreach Co-ordinator Natasha Frid ~ at dreamwalkerdanceoutreach@gmail.com
