Art & Culture Live!: Community Collaborations - Bringing Spanish Poetry to Life in SE Minnesota
Bringing Spanish Poetry to Life in SE Minnesota brought the Deborah Elias Danza Española company (St. Paul, MN) to five communities in southeastern Minnesota. The program provided both classroom lecture/demonstrations and performances of “The Moon’s Desire.” Both of these activities focused on acquainting the audience with Federico García Lorca and Spanish poetry in general as well as Spanish music and dance.
Event Dates and Locations:
April 8, 2010 – Winona Senior High School classroom presentations (Winona, MN)
March 30 -
April 1, 2010 – LaCrescent Senior High School classroom presentations (LaCrescent, MN)
April 6, 2010 – Lanesboro Public Schools elementary classroom presentations (Lanesboro, MN)
April 21, 2010 – “The Moon’s Desire” at the Jon Hassler Theatre (Plainview, MN)
April 23, 2010 – “The Moon’s Desire” at the St. Mane Theatre (Lanesboro, MN)
April 24, 2010 – “The Moon’s Desire” at the Masonic Temple theater (Winona, MN)
April 25, 2010 – “The Moon’s Desire” at the Northfield Arts Guild (Northfield, MN)
Partner Organization(s):
Jon Hassler Theatre
LaCrescent-Hokah High School
Lanesboro Arts Center
Lanesboro Public Library
Lanesboro Public Schools
Minnesota Conservatory for the Arts
Northfield Arts Guild
Northfield Public Library
Plainview Public Library
Riverwalk Arts Quarter
Winona Public Library
Winona Senior High School
Partner Organization(s) Contribution/Role in the Program: The schools listed not only provided students and classroom time, the Spanish classes studied poetry and traditional dance weeks prior to the presentations. The public libraries assisted in promotion for the public performances with displays of relevant library material to attract attention. The other organizations listed above either hosted the public performance and/or assisted with additional promotion and program preparation.
Program Outputs: Outputs are things you can count such as attendance, number of new participants, and the number of attendees who had never been at a similar event, and so on.
The 20 classroom presentations were attended by 586 students. The four public performances had a total of 283 attendees. Combined, there were 869 audience members for this program.
Measurable Outcomes may be collected by survey, anecdotal responses, post-test; End user change in Behavior, Attitude, Skills, Knowledge, Condition and/or Status
All survey respondents said there was an increase in their awareness of Lorca and of flamenco. The public performances yielded a desire to learn more of Spanish poetry although the classroom demonstrations did not significantly change attitude although they did learn more of the language and culture of Spain. Amusingly, one student at LaCrescent found ways around her schedule to attend the program in three different classes.