Dear Parents & Family –

Performing Arts Workshop is delighted to have your child participate in our artistic residencies through our partnership with your local afterschool program and the Department of Children, Youth and their Families (DCYF).  Performing Arts Workshop is a non-profit organization dedicated to helping your child develop critical thinking, creative expression, and basic learning skills through the arts.  This year, our artists have worked with your child at the following afterschool sites: Edward Robeson Taylor Elementary, Paul Revere Elementary, Visitacion Valley Boys & Girls Club, Visitacion Valley Community Beacon Center, or Visitacion Valley Community Center.

What does this mean for your child?
Since Fall 2008, your child has participated in a performing arts class during their afterschool program.  Classes are led by one of our trained professional artists in one of the following art forms: Capoeira, Cuban Dance, Kung Fu, or Hip Hop Music.   
Through my own observations, I have seen young boys and girls discover their talents, build their confidence, and develop leadership skills in our performing arts classes.  At Visitacion Valley Community Center, I witnessed a young girl, dance to Cuban beats without hesitation. She taught her peers, danced freely with a partner or on her own, and she wasn’t afraid to dance with the boys in her class! 

In this newsletter, you will read descriptions and examples of some of the other exciting things happening in your child’s class.  Please visit class! Before picking up your child for the afternoon, we invite you to stick around and witness your child’s art making process firsthand.

If you have any questions about Performing Arts Workshop or Afterschool For All, please feel free to contact me via email at mariel@performingartsworkshop.org or by telephone at (415) 673-2634 x 203.

On behalf of the Performing Arts Workshop and our Teaching Artists, it has been an extreme pleasure working with your child this year! Happy Reading!

Sincerely,

Mariel G. dela Paz
Program Manager, Artists-in-Communities
Performing Arts Workshop

Hip Hop Scrabble, Anyone?
Hip Hop Music at Visitacion Valley Community Beacon and Boys & Girls Club
with Rahman Jamaal

Rahman currently teaches Hip Hop Music, particularly the art form of Rap, to the teens at Visitacion Valley Boys & Girls Club and to the middle school-aged youth at the Community Beacon Center.  Rahman has been able to hook students into the art by teaching them the tools in creative ways by rapping back and forth using only the words on a juice box label (“juice box battle”) or playing Hip Hop scrabble.

Students learn the history of Hip Hop and discuss its current artists.  They also tell their personal stories through the musical forms of freestyle and rap.  With this skill, youth reflect on their own these experiences and dialogue on the important events that concern them most in their personal lives.

Mastery of Kung Fu:
ER Taylor Elementary Afterschool with Scott P. Phillips

As students have gathered experience in this Chinese art form, they are challenged to go beyond what they believe they can do, changing the very foundation of their individual physicality, coordination, presence, and gaining a broader vision of what it means to be human.
-Scott P. Phillips, Teaching Artist

This is Performing Arts Workshop’s third year teaching Kung Fu at ER Taylor Afterschool.  To ensure that students are receiving the highest quality and rigor of arts learning, Teaching Artist Scott has formed an advanced level class to meet the needs and desires of students that have taken the class in previous years.  Over the duration of the school year, classes have met twice a week.  Each class consists of a warm-up, basic Kung Fu stances, and playing instruments for each other to accompany their Kung Fu routines.  Both beginners and advanced students continue to unfold the traditional ten-line Northern Shaolin routine of “springy legs.” Students in the advanced class are further challenged and tested on their mastery of skills.  Excelling students are awarded the opportunity to practice Kung Fu with the added element of wooden swords and are encouraged to improvise their own two-person routines. 

CAPOEIRA CREATES COMMUNITY:

Developing a sense of community is critical to learning capoeira since Capoeiristas depend on each other to provide energy by playing instruments, clapping their hands, playing the actual games of capoeira, and singing songs in coordination with each other. 
-Gregory Minor, Teaching Artist

Paul Revere Elementary Afterschool
with Gregory Minor

What is Capoeira? What is dialogue? How does dialogue exist in Capoeira? These are the type of questions that Teaching Artist Greg asks his Paul Revere students in the beginning of each of his classes to stimulate critical thinking while immersing them in the Brazilian art of Capoeira.  Students warm-up using basic capoeira movements, crawling on their hands backwards and forwards, hopping like kangaroos, and flipping like monkeys to ease them into the moves of Capoeira.  Currently, the young boys and girls at Paul Revere Afterschool are learning to connect the basic movements while playing instruments and singing the songs of capoeira.  They are starting to improvise their dances and are building positive relationships with their peers, a key ingredient to a healthy community.

Visitacion Valley Boys & Girls
with Sale Alves

Participants in the Capoeira classes taught by Sale Alves at the Visitacion Valley Boys & Girls Club are re-envisioning their community. Youth must observe and listen to their classmates. They must also practice “playing” respectfully with each other in a community circle, or roda. Students are curious and reflect on their newly discovered ability to communicate and dialogue with their peers without the use of words.  They learn the basic movements of capoeira and play multiple instruments involved in this Brazilian culture and tradition.

From Havana to Visitacion Valley:
Cuban Dance & Music at Visitacion Valley Community Center with Jose Barroso
At Visitation Valley Community Center, the younger (5-6 years old) students are learning the dance of Cuban Comparsa Carnaval.  The older (6-11 years old) students are learning Salsa dance.  In both classes, students begin by warming up and learning how to properly stretch their muscles of their legs, torso, arms, neck, and head.  In order to better understand the cultural background of the dances, students learn to play some percussion instruments like the clave and congo drum and have learned traditional songs to accompany their movements.  In addition to learning the basic steps and music to the Comparsa and Salsa, students gather around the map to learn about the geography of Cuba and the origins and evolution of Cuban dance.  As they dance, students become leaders and gain confidence. They share the connections that they make between Cuban dance and their own lives and families.  One young boy makes a distinct connection between the moves he has learned in Karate to the Mambo in dance class. His “karate salsa” includes a new move, the “Cat Stance Mambo”!

Afterschool For All (AFA)
San Francisco’s Afterschool for All Initiative (AFA) is a citywide collaboration between Department of Children, Youth and their Families (DCYF), several city departments, the San Francisco Unified School District, and community based organizations to support diversity in quality afterschool programs for all elementary and middle school children by 2010.  Performing Arts Workshop received an AFA Grant Award in to provide quality arts programming in your child’s afterschool program.