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• Stefan
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZX3C8JuynVE
• Sam
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ReicnrffpA

AMIDONS SUMMER WEEK-LONG 3-CREDIT COURSE

Every summer Mary Alice and I teach a week long 3-credit course for music teachers taught by Peter and Mary Alice Amidon. We are anticipating that we will be teaching this again in the summer of 2011 (probably around the second week of July, but the specific week will not be scheduled for another month or so):

RICH TRADITIONS AND NEW CREATIONS: DANCE, SONG, STORYTELLING AND LITERATURE IN THE MUSIC CLASSROOM

(or “Everything we know”)

Hartt Summerterm, West Hartford, CT

General info: http://harttweb2.hartford.edu/summer.php
The foundation of this class is the wealth of songs, dances, singing games, and folktales that spring from the Anglo American/African American oral traditions. Each participant will write a song and tell a folktale.
Contact: Dee Hansen * 860-768-4128 * dehansen@hartford.edu

WORKSHOP NOTES

YOUR HOMEWORK:

Go dancing!

• Dance in Connecticut:
  http://www1.ctcontra.com:81/
• Dance anywhere in the United States:
  http://www.thedancegypsy.com/

HERE IS WHAT WE DID:

The foundations of joy - singing and dancing

Alleluia - South African

I am sorry that we do not have permission to distribute a printed copy of this SATB chant; we need to research the author, who I believe is South African.

My Heart is Ready by Cindy Kallet

• My Heart is Ready.pdf

This is our favorite new instant singalong for group harmony singing. Mary Alice and I are longtime fans of Cindy Kallet’s singing. You can hear her singing this on her CD “Heart Walk”. http://www.cindykallet.com/music/1568 http://www.cindykallet.com/music/1568 Check out her other music.

Blaydon Races

in the handout. in NEDM’s Chimes of Dunkirk The revised NEDM Chimes of Dunkirk CD has a Blaydon Races cut that was recorded for this dance, but you can also use any jig or reel 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.

Bridge of Athlone

in the handout. In NEDM’s Listen to the Mockingbird collection This requires a 3-part tune. ‘Listen to the Mockingbird’ has a three part jig: ‘Blarney Pilgrim’ that works great for this dance. We really like dancing it to the three-part ‘Reel de Rimouski’ on NEDM’s ‘Any Jig or Reel’ CD, which is what we did in Woodbridge. We find this to be an engaging dance for 2nd - 6th and great for a community dance.

Seed in the Ground

vocal part in the handout. We do a banjo/guitar version of this on our new CD “Song in My Heart.” The SSAA/piano arrangement we did in the workshop is available for purchase. It will be up soon on our www.amidonmusic.com website listening and sheet music download page; for now I can deliver it by email attachments.

Later on we did a dance I’d made up to this song:

• If you got the sun
• *Walk sideways with hands miming sun rising. and if you got the rain
• *Walk sideways the other way with hands miming rain. and you plant a little seed
• *Crouch down. in the old back lane
• *Then jump and turn halfway with arms moving directly over head, end pointing in opposite direction. And you wish and you hope
• *hands clasped together in front, take step to diagonal left, then diagonal right, And you keep the weeds down
• *Crouch down, keeping head up. You might find, oh
• *standing up, step and gesture with arm to left. You might find
• *step and gesture with arm to right a root growing down from the seed
• *mime with hands in the ground
• *take one step forward (leaving other foot in place) ending with forward leg bent a little and back leg straight as arms and hands sweep from front to both sides (separating) as if miming the flat surface of the ground.

Love Call Me Home

n the handout This is on our new Hallowell (hospice singers) CD that takes its title from this song.
http://www.hallowell-singers.org

Teaching traditional dance to children

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; dosido (gents start on inside, ladies start going outside) flowing into two hand turn flowing into promenade; 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 ça va

in the handout In NEDM’sSashay the Donut collection Formation: circle of couples (not a mixer) Music: Any reel (French Canadian is nice for this). 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.

Three instantly engaging dances for young children from Mary Alice. These will be in a book/CD/DVD of singing games and music/ movement actitivies for pre-school/kindergarten children collected and edited by Mary Alice Amidon and Andy Davis. It will be released sometime in 2011.

• Knees Up Mother Brown.pdf
• Sleeping Bunny.pdf
• Strolling in the Park.pdf

Sashay the Donut

in the handout in NEDM’s Sashay the Donut collection I like calling this with groups of 4th-6th graders, 6-8 couples in a set, to “The Flying Tent” on NEDM’s “Other Side of the Tracks” CD. You have to call pretty strongly in the beginning to help define the phrase, but later on the phrase gets much more clear and the dance goes great with the music. You can also do this dance with larger groups, in which case the dance will go across the phrasing of the music (once through the dance is more than once through the tune). You just pick up the beginning of the nearest 8 or 16 bar phrase when starting each sequence over again.

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 start with a story about how Kings and Queens realized that it might be more fun to dance with more than just their own spouses, and so they needed to devise a polite and efficient way to choose other partners. “And the method they came up with was so good we still do it today.”

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 10 steps: The approach. Eye contact. The question. The answer. King puts out his hand. Queen stands and takes King’s hand. They hang on to each other’s hand and walk to the top of the hall. If there are two Queens then there is a Queen on one side and a Queen on the other side. If there are two Kings (you know the rest). If it is a King and a Queen, 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. Then they drop their hands, and, voila, there they are.

Then I have a volunteer Queen ask a King, and when they are finished I have a volunteer King ask a Queen, and they get in place in the line beside the first King & Queen. Then all ask. This can be wonderful, and the children who succeed in doing this can be quite proud of themselves.

Kings and Queens

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.

Final Community Dance

Sicilian Vowel Dance

in handout In NEDM’s “Sashay the Donut” We used ‘Golden Keyboard’ (actually, the piano only comes in at the end of the cut) from NEDM’s ‘Any Jig or Reel’ for this. Do this with 5th or 6th graders who have a fair amount of dance experience, and who have already learned the grand right and left (‘Lucky Seven’ from our Chimes of Dunkirk collection is a good teaching dance for the Grand Right and Left figure). You should have at least 20 dancers (five groups of four) to do this dance; 24 or more is even better. It can work at a community dance if you have all the younger children dance with an adult or older experienced child partner. The main teaching point is, once folks are in the formation of couple facing couple (Sicilian circle formation), having everyone point to the left. Those pointing to the inside of the circle say “I go inside first.” Those pointing to the outside say, “I go outside first.” That is the direction they start going when they do the big, no hands, stay-with-partner grand right and left.

Circle Waltz Mixer

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.

Keep on dancing and singing!

Best,

Peter and Mary Alice Amidon

Peter and Mary Alice Amidon
20 Willow Street
Brattleboro, VT 05301
http://www.amidonmusic.com
amidonpeter@gmail.com
maryaliceamidon@gmail.com
Peter's cell - 802-257-1006
Mary Alice's cell - 646-957-7047
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