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This page was updated
February 5, 2009

Workshops

Workshop Notes

New York City Tri-Chapter Workshop Notes

Jan 31, 2009

Dear Tri-Chapter Music Teachers,

We had such a wonderful time with you yesterday; thanks for your hospitality, your enthusiastic participation, and your wonderful sharing of your ideas.

I strongly encourage you to go to the New York City Barn Dance that was mentioned yesterday. It has live music, is beginner-friendly, and includes contras, squares and couple dances.

Here is everything you need to know about it:

The next dance is Thursday, Feb 12, with a great fiddler; Rhys Jones, who is a good friend/colleague of our (fiddler) son Sam.

And here is a site for finding any other dances anywhere in the United States:

Here below are some announcements about future Amidon workshops and camps.

Below that are the notes. You can just click on the "POST-WORKSHOP NOTES" below to go directly to the notes.

Announcements

You can get more detailed information on the below upcoming Amidon workshops (and all our upcoming workshops) at:

or you could subscribe to the Amidon e-mail list. I send postings maybe once a month - the classic format is: Dance Workshop - Announcements - Musings. Here is the most recent one

Mary Alice and I were pleased to see some of the folks who have taken our summer week-long, 3-credit course at Hartt School of Music in West, Hartford, CT. We are offering it again this summer:

Rich Traditions and New Creations

Dance, Song, Storytelling and Literature in the Music Classroom

Mon - Fri, July 6-10, 2009

Information on that course will be posted at the Hartt Summerterm website soon:

or e-mail dehansen@hartford.edu for more information.

Adult Village Harmony singing camp

August 7 - 16, 2009

Peter and Mary Alice Amidon are joined by two young gifted singer/ percussionists: Luke Hoffman, and the Amidons' son Stefan Amidon in leading a 9-day camp of SATB singing from ethnic choral traditions including American shape note music, African American gospel, and the leaders' own transcriptions and arrangements of songs steeped in the oral tradition.

NEW YORK CITY TRI-CHAPTER PRESENTATION

AMIDON POST-SESSION NOTES

Blaydon Races (p. 6 in handout)

in NEDM's Chimes of Dunirk collection

Mary Alice played for this. You can do this to any jig medley.

We did this is a mixer, but you can also do it with younger children without changing partners. We often call this at weddings. We always start teaching this, as we do with any circle mixer, by having the dancers promenade and defining the gents/moons/peanut butter/inside partners and the ladies/stars/jelly/outside partners.

Tree Song (p. 3 in handout)

in NEDM's Down in the Valley collection.

I introduced this with a story that I made up. Elements of the story came from this singing game, the singing game "Roger is Dead" (NEDM's Down in the Valley) and the traditional song "Chiney Doll" (the traditional Missouri song that our (then) 2 1/2 year old Sam sang at the end of the workshop).

Lorraine Hammond, who composed this wonderful singing game, is a songwriter and musician, and the best known Appalachian dulcimer player in the country. She is in the greater Boston area. The piano arrangement on the CD is Peter's. We find this to be a calming, centering dance, both for the children and for ourselves.

Highland Gates (p. 6 in handout)

in NEDM's Down in the Valley collection

This is a great dance for opening a community dance. Folks can join in the dancing as they straggle in.

 

Dance Teaching Tips

Mittens; front of your mitten on the front of your neighbor's mitten, thumb lightly on back; take hands drop hands take hands drop hands; posture; teach the forward separately from the back in the forward and back; shake partner's hand, hang on, take partner's left hand for teaching promenade; while promenading: inside person is the moon/peanut butter/gent, outside is the star/jelly/lady; four steps of making a circle from a promenade: "Hang on to partner stop walking, hang on to partner face the center, drop hands, take hands.";

9 ways of keeping the circle big and round on circle left and right; when music starts clapping the first of each 8 beats; doing the dance with your hands; "thick" calling, then "thin" calling then no calling; saying the call right before the 'clap' or before the first beat of the phrase and figure.

Comment ca va? (P. 7 in handout)

In NEDM'sSashay the Donut collection

This is really a version of "La Bastringue" with a more sophisticated B1 section (after the Circle L, Circle R, and before the promenade) that makes it a great dance for 4th - 6th graders; it is not too difficult, but it keeps them engaged and the flowing B1 figures makes.

Two teaching tips specific to this dance:

1) "Bow to your partner, say "You are my partner."

Turn your back on your partner and bow to this person, saying "You are my neighbor." (Drill this a bit by having dancers bow to partner, then neighbor, then neighbor, then ceiling, then partner, etc.)

2) Facing neighbor all put left hand in the air.

Everybody say and do this: "Elbow down, hand up, thumb around thumb, fingers over wrist, 7% arm wrestle (give weight to neighbor), then allemand left neighbor WHILE LOOKING FOR PARTNER, and then dosido partner (Gents/Moons going towards the middle first in order to dosido passing right shoulders) WHILE LOOKING FOR NEIGHBOR, then allemand left neighbor again WHILE LOOKING FOR PARTNER, then, "Hey", take partners right hand in right (like a brief handshake) and go into a promenade with partner.

 

PICTURE BOOKS I

(See Mary Alice's Picture Book Bibliography on pp. 10-11 of the handout.)

In the Fiddle is a Song

Picture book with background music.

I Live in Music

Picture book with background music.

Summertime

Picture book of a song.

Keep on Singing, the Ballad of Marian Anderson

Setting a poem in a picture book to music.

INTRODUCTING SONGS WITH STORIES

Fox Went Out on a Chilly Night (p. 3 in handout)

This is on the Amidons' Faerie's Gift CD

What great language in this song, right from the start: "He had many a mile to go this night…..The ducks and the geese are kept therein…..He grabbed the grey goose by the neck and he flung a duck across his back….. Old Mother Tippertopper jumped out of bed and out of the window she cocked her head crying, "John, John, ……The fox, he said "I better flee with my kill….Then the fox and his wife without any strife, they cut up the goose with a fork and a knife…." If children get involved in the story of this song they will memorize this great poetry very quickly. Make up your own story introduction to this.

Busy Monday Morning (p. 2 in the handout)

Traditional Polish

On the Amidons' "All I Really Need" CD

We had you make up your own storytelling introductions to this song. What a wonderful variety of solutions!

Choosing Partners

We think it is a real gift to children to teach them how to choose their own partners. I like to frame this in 'Kings' and 'Queens' language to help the children get over their self consciousness over choosing partners.

I have them all practice the words: 'May I please have this dance?' 'Yes thank you.' and then practice answering me, and then practice asking me. Then I demonstrate what it looks like to ask a partner to dance, by asking one of the 'Queens'. Then, I have that Queen sit down, and I ask her again, showing the following steps:

  1. The approach.
  2. Eye contact.
  3. The question.
  4. The answer.
  5. King puts out his hand.
  6. Queen stands and takes King's hand.
  7. They hang on to each other's hand and walk to the top of the hall.
  8. The King stands on the King's side, the Queen on the Queen's side and they face each other, nose, toes and bellybutton, taking two hands.
  9. Then they drop their hands, and, voila, there they are.

Then I have a volunteer Queen ask a King, then a volunteer King ask a Queen, and then all ask. This can be quite wonderful, and the children who succeed in doing this should be quite proud of themselves.

Kings and Queens (p. 7 in the handout)

In NEDM's Sashay the Donut collection

We used 'On the Danforth' from NEDM's 'Other Side of the Tracks' CD for this dance. You might also use our other version of 'On the Danforth' which is on our 'Sashay the Donut' CD.

Before we teach this dance we will dub each child a King or a Queen, and talk to them (sometimes while the music is playing to help sustain the mood) about what it means to be a King and Queen: They have royal posture, they never rush, they make good decisions, they are very attractive; basically describing the ideal King/Queen or, which, in my mind is being the very best person they can be. This is in the style of an historic English country dance.

Silver Rain (p. 5 in the handout)

This is also a beautiful unison to do with children, accompanied by guitar or piano.

LUNCH

CREATING AN ORIGINAL DANCE WITH YOUR STUDENTS

I start with the question: "What is a dance?"

A dance starts with a formation (or a shape):

There is also the Sicilian Circle formation (couple facing couple around a circle) and also the concentric circle formation where couples are in a circle with, say, the gents facing out and the ladies facing in.

Then there are the figures, which is, simply what the dancers do in the dance. Some obvious figures include some you do with the whole group (let's say we're doing a circle mixer):

and figures you do just with your partner (or neighbor)

and some that are a bit of both like

It is OK to have an original figure or two in our original dance, but not too many. Mostly you should have familiar, common figures that dances can learn quickly.

Once we (or I) decide on a formation, I simply say, "What first." and do whatever the first person suggests, in our case, "Jump!".

As the suggestions come in I might invite discussion about which suggestion to choose (if there are more than one). I try to use as many of the children's ideas as possible, and I almost always have the children try out dancing a suggested figure before discussing it.

Your job is also to facilitate the children creating a dance that is fun to do. You might make a small suggestion here and there, such as my suggestion having the second "setting" figure in our dance be done facing your partner and with everyone setting in, then out, so that we are all ready for the ballroom-position-with-partner sashaying in and out of the center.

The children can help figure out how to make the dance fit the AABB of the music. It is also an option to ignore the AABB and make up a dance that goes across the AABB pattern of the music.

Once you and your students have made up a dance, it is important to name the dance. This is the same process as making up the dance. I take in suggestions and facilitate the decision making. Sometimes we combine the words in two or three different suggestion. Sometimes we vote on two or three different name candidates. Sometimes, as happened with us, someone comes up with a suggestion so inspired that I declare it the official name by acclamation.

When students create their own dance, they really take ownership of it.

Your dance, "The Wall Street Turn Around" is a really wonderful dance, congratulations! I will be trying it out with some students in future residencies; I hope you try it out with your students as well.

Wall Street Turnaround

by the New York City Tri-Chapter

Amidon Workshop Participants,

January 31, 2009:

(Starts with a jump that is launched on the fourth beat of the four-beat introductory vamp.)

I would love to get a video of you doing this dance up on Youtube.

PICTURE BOOKS II

(See Mary Alice's Picture Book Bibliography on pp. 10-11 of the handout.)

Love Me Tender

Picture book of a song

Johnny Appleseed

Picture book of a poem set to music.

Owl Moon

Picture book read to background music

FOLKTALES, FAIRYTALES

The Faerie's Gift

This is on the Amidons' Faerie's Gift CD

Acting out stories

Children do this quite naturally; you just set it up and, as much as possible, get out of the way. After telling a folktale I give them the homework to retell it aloud, we might go through a speed through of the story or do a quick group map of the story or discuss the story (What was the funniest/saddest/most scary/most memorable moment?) Once they all know the story well, you are the narrator, and maybe also the musician (guitar, accordion). Pull the characters (and human props) from the 'audience' of children sitting in a bunch in front of the 'stage'.

All the action takes place right in the middle in front of the audience. The 'actors' speak loudly so everyone can hear. If they forget what happens next you can feed them a line as the narrator: "And the woodcutter's wife told him how much she wanted a child."

You solicit staging and choreographic ideas from all the students, or have a mini-workshop to work out some choreography, such as how to act out a flying hawk.

You can use this method to create a musical performance with added instrumental music, songs and dancing, or just do it once and leave it at that.

Chiney Doll (p. 2 on handout)

There is a wonderful book of this song that is sadly out of print:

Mommy, Buy Me a China Doll : Adapted from an Ozark children's song by Harve Zemach (Adapter), Margot Zemach (Illustrator)

Try the online 2nd hand book sources.

I always introduce this song with a story, the idea of which I got from that picture book. I had always done the story with the book when I told it to 2-year-old Sam, and when we were recording Sam singing familiar songs and Mary Alice got to the Chiney Doll, Sam could not sing the song without telling the story: as far as we know, the first story he ever told.

As I mentioned at the workshop, a teacher who listened to that who knew a lot about child development said, "When Sam was grunting his way through the story it wasn't that he didn't remember the story; he knew it perfectly well. It was that he was turning the images in his head into language."

And that is what we do when we tell stories, and we listen to stories we turn the language back into images.

Children need to hear stories, they need the classic folktales as a way to help sort out their emotional lives. The archetypal characters that inhabit folktales: the kings, queens, princes, princesses, ogres, giants, witches, wise old women and men, and everyman Jacks and Marys are, according to one of my storytelling mentors, Donald Davis, all part of our own inner selves. When a prince marries a princess at the end of a folktale, Donald Davis goes on, that marriage represents our male self marrying our female self; a healthy emotional integration.

There are depths of meaning of these wonderful folktales that we will never fully plumb, but whenever we tell folktales to children, it is wonderful to see them uncover endless and often surprising new meanings.

Classic folk tales brainstorm

TELL THEM!

Little Red Riding Hood, Three Bears, Three Billy Goats Gruff, Rapunzel, The Mitten, Cinderella, Rumplestilskin Sleeping Beauty, Jack and the Beanstalk, Hansel and Gretel, Three Little Pigs, Gingerbread Man, etc.

Tell any other favorite folktales.

Tell stories from your own childhood.

Create your own storytelling introductions to songs.

Circle Waltz Mixer (p. 8 in the handout)

In NEDM's 'Sashay the Donut' collection.

We used 'In Continental' Waltz from the 'Sashay' CD for the music.

This is a wonderful dance for a wedding where you can do it the original way we learned it, doing a short waltz instead of the two hand turn. In the original dance gents are the "posts" and women are the "twirlers", but it works perfectly fine in a non-gender community dance with a two hand turn. In order to make sure that this works in a community dance you:

 

Wow, that's the end of the workshop. We had such

a great time with you, thank you very much!

 

Oh yes, your homework:

 

Best,

Peter (and Mary Alice) Amidon