Grinnell's Third Time At Galaxy

Our third time at Galaxy started the same as before. Zoe lead the warm ups and did a great job getting everyone to begin thinking about creative dance. Meanwhile, I was finding white boards to tape up the 5 photographs of mitosis that we had used a few days earlier with the small groups of kids. Seeing as how few kids were at the workshop where we looked at these beautiful photographs, I wanted to bring the images to the attention of all the Galaxy kids!

Because the group was quite full, we decided against working with all 5 images in the right order, or at all, necessarily. Each group started at one of the images and stuck with that image for most of the remaining time. I had a group that began by looking at the image, intent on finding every single detail within the picture and were totally into translating what they saw into movement. They were very focused, for instance, on the black spot at the lower left corner of the image. Right away the kids had some fantastic ideas about the movement we would use. Some kids were exploring how to dance “the background”, some were figuring out how to emulate certain parts of the cell, while others were experimenting with how to be the chromosomes. As we were piecing together ideas, one young girl declared that we would end the dance by walking in a grid-like pattern across the space, which would lead us offstage – the same grid walk we were rehearsing during Dance Ensemble for our final performance!

But in an instant, the focus we had maintained thus far so well was gone. It was our group’s turn to become distracted by the pile of beanbags this time. All the bags were pulled out and promptly began to be thrown about and jumped on. I worked with this diversion, as the bags became the dark spots on the image or the border of the cell. But as more bags were being pulled out, more ideas tossed around, the group inevitably began to fall apart.

Some of the other group leaders were having the same problem at that point so we thought we would just say our good-byes. Most of the groups had dissipated and no one could really piece together a movement.
Nonetheless, like the week prior, we had exposed the students to these images that inspired them, even if for only a moment. The workshop allowed them to use the skills of observation, analysis, and synthesis through movement that we have been practicing throughout the semester in an effort to think in a different way. No doubt it was hard for everyone to remain focused after a long day at school. But for the time that we were focused, it was wonderful to see how many different ways we could bring the still image to life.