Fire. Wind. Water.

The inspiration for class this week (and next week) is Nature. We began with breathing exercises, then yoga poses. All the poses we did were inspired by the natural world: Star Pose, Tree Pose, Mountain Pose,Crooked Branch Pose, and Group Yucca Pose. These poses come from the Children's Book of Yoga by Thia Luby, a resource I use often when integrating yoga into the dance and drama classes I teach.

I wrote all the poses on index cards and decorated them with a picture of the natural object resembling the pose. Before I showed the girls a pose, I showed them the card and had them say it back to me. Then we would do the pose together. They all seemed to enjoy this warm-up activity.

The next part of class got them traveling in the dance space. The rules to the game are -while I shake the tambourine move freely in the space. When I hit the tambourine, create your own Cactus Pose, a tableau of bendy and spiky shapes with your body. This was a lot of fun. Then I challenged them to create cacti poses with a partner when I hit the tambourine, then as an entire group. It was a lot of fun to lead this exercise and the girls seemed to have a great time bending their bodies in interesting ways to become the spiky plants. I enjoy leading the group improv activity structure that goes from solo movement, to partners, to small group, to whole group all together; the structure has a great build-up and is a great format for team/group-building. Mirroring exercises are also successful in this format.

Next we gathered around the big board to do some brainstorming and more literacy. This exercise can be improved with some really great visual images of nature, or by holding the class outside.  It was dark out during the class, so looking out the windows wasn't much help. Not that it really would have been that much help since I teach this class in the middle of a city. However, the girls were able to come up with a great list of nature words to play with.

I introduced the girls to one of my favorite physical theatre improvisation exercises; an adaptation of Natural Phenomenon. Thank you Ruth Zapora and my exposure to Action Theatre for this one. I would call out a word from their list - wind, sunshine, waves, thunder storm, etc. and they would embody that natural phenomenon in movement. Then, we did a performance score.

First I had them do stage crosses. One girl was babbling brook, one was fire, and one was wind.  Then I had them cross as duets, then as a trio. For the last run, I used a little side-coaching telling them to respond to each other - "Fire- what happens when wind shows up?" and the dancer had a great movement response! She got it, and the other dancers did a great job too. Fun was had all around. Those are the moments I love to be around for when I am teaching. When you get to witness when one of your students gets it, discovers something, has an "aha" moment.

That's why it is great to be a teacher.