Sunday, October 5, 2014

Smooth Transition Follow-up

Remember in June we organized an event at Hillcrest Elementary School for grade 6 students from Dufferin, Hillcrest, Keppel-Sarawak and Sydenham who would be attending grade 7 at Hillcrest this fall? Well, now that it is a month into the new school year, we are going to visit these students in their "new" school and classes and see how they are doing.

On October 6, we will be bringing these students together once again in their school gymnasium to do some dances they already know - Kambos(Greece), Alunelul(Romania), Kanaztanc(Hungary) and Kulsko Horo(Blugaria). I think we will probably have time to teach them a couple more - Ambee Dageets(Armenia) and Zemir Atik(Israel)

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

It's School Outreach Time Again!

Last school year, our School Outreach have visited over 20 classes of 3 elementary schools in Owen Sound --- Hillcrest, Sydenham and Dufferin --- and 1 in Southampton, GC Huston, introducing international folk dance to more than 500 children and youths. Two or three area schools are coming on board this year! The first workshops started today with a grade 6/7 and a grade 7/8 classes of Holland-Chatsworth Central School. Both classes learn 2 dances: Kambos(Greece) and Alunelul(Romania).


Monday, September 15, 2014

We Have Moved!

With the arrival of fall starts our indoor sessions. After enjoying the mirrored room(fitness studio) at Owen Sound Family Y for 2 years, we are moving into Hit the Beat. We are really excited about the change: the venue is right downtown, which makes the sessions more accessible; we get the venue - two studios if we need to use both - all to ourselves, and storage space too! Grey Bruce International Folk Dancers finally has potential to expand!

We meet Fridays from 4:30 to 6:30pm. There is going to be a drop-in fee of $5 to $8 depending on attendance, in order to cover rental cost. The sessions are open to both gender aged 9 and up.

GBIFD's "Let's Dance" Workshop July 1, 2014 - Part 2 of 4

Another segment of our workshop on Canada Day.

Sunday, July 20, 2014

GBIFD's "Let's Dance" Workshop July1, 2014 - Part 1 of 4

On July 1, we celebrated Canada Day by sharing international folk dance with our community. Here's a couple of Armenia dances, Assoulis and Ambee Dageets.



Thursday, June 19, 2014

Looking Good

Here's a snapshot at Grey Bruce One World Festival. Kids who were in classes GBIFD have done workshops with were pleased to see us there; even those who were not too keen to dance during workshops eagerly joined in. A few of them even returned to do more after visiting other activities on the site!


Next Up, Workshop at Canada Day Celebration

Owen Sound celebrates Canada Day at Kelso Beach. This year, GBIFD will be joining the team of activity providers and hosting a 45 minutes Let's Dance at 3pm. Unlike Grey Bruce One World Festival whose main audience is elementary school classes, the Celebration is a family event. We are looking forward to having parents/grandparents joining us and their children/grandchildren! Folk dancing sets no age boundary.

Monday, May 5, 2014

Smooth Transition Folk Dance Gathering

Date is confirmed.

On Tuesday June 17, grade six students of Hillcrest Elementary School, Dufferin Elementary School and grade six French Immersion students of Sydenham Community School will gather in the large gym of Hillcrest at the start of the school day and do an hour of folk dancing! The objective of the event is to provide opportunity for these to-be-middle-schoolers to meet and interact with each other before they start school together in the fall.

This September, over one hundred 6th graders from 4 different schools will continue their elementary school in the senior section of Hillcrest. In the past few years volunteering at the school, I have observed, and teachers have told me, some of the difficulties these pre-teens are faced with. It takes them a long time to break down walls between them and be able to learn and grow as a group. When I was doing folk dance workshops with grade 7 classes at Hillcrest last fall, the students were very receptive to this group activity, to the teachers' surprise. Each workshop ran for 3 sessions. By the third session, students were mixing with each other. Hence, I started toying with the idea of a folk dance event for grade 6s.

It was not difficult to convince principals and teachers how their students will benefit from the event. In the past couple of months, I did workshops with all the grade 6 classes involved, teaching them the same 4 dances which will serve as ice-breaker at Smooth Transition. The students are also going to learn two or three dances together.

The classes are looking forward to dance together, and so am I!

Sunday, March 16, 2014

Cultiviating interest among youths

The reason I have not written on this blog since last August is that I have been busy cultivating folk dance interest among youths in the community.

Between September and December, I have gone to 15 classes at 3 elementary schools in Owen Sound and run folk dance workshops for students from kindergarten to grade 8. I visited each class once, twice or three times depending on the arrangement with the teacher. Most teachers had me in three consecutive weeks, so that the students were able to learn at least 4 dances from different countries. Some teachers even treated these folk dance sessions as part of the class' cultural study. For example, Mrs Stredwick, a grade 5 teacher at Dufferin Elementary School, had her students look up Israel, Romania, Turkey and Armenia in the world map after I had told her ahead of time the dances I was going to teach her class --- Shibolet Bassedeh, Alunelul, Iste Hendek and Ambee Dageets.

These workshops were very well-received by both teachers and students. Dance is in elementary school's syllabus. Unfortunately, a lot of teachers do not feel comfortable teaching it as they themselves have done very little dance or none at all. Often, classes are shown instruction videos and students are asked to follow along. Teachers welcomed my workshops as there is a "real live instructor" present to help the kids --- steps are walked through at the pace of the students; steps are "dissected" and shown to the students so they understand how to do them. Students loves the sessions during which they get to listen to exotic and appealing music they don't hear anywhere else; they learn a lot of basic steps which they can use with music of their choice. Three years ago, a grade 7 boy signed up to do my folk dance elective at Hillcrest Elementary School and was disappointed the first day when he found out that I was not going to teach him break dance. I explained that the steps in all the dances I teach can be adapted to most genres of dance. He did not believe me at first; but by the end of the four weeks, he was incorporating these "simple" steps into his break dance moves!

The second round of elementary school workshops is about to start. In the next five weeks, I will be visiting six classes from grade 3 to grade 6. By the end of spring, about 500 elementary school students in Owen Sound will have experienced the joy of international folk dancing!