Arts Learning

This was easiest to assess in Dance and Music classes where rhythms were performed directly. In the two dance classes, the students worked with Marciano Silva Dos Santos for three concentrated weeks. Their dance teacher was able to observe and record which students were demonstrating the rhythms correctly, and worked with any who needed assistance. Having a performance to look forward to was a great motivator to the students to not only get the rhythms right, but to perform in unison with each other. Dance students were then challenged by Mr. Silva Dos Santos to create phrases of their own that utilized the rhythms. Students had a month to refine these with their teacher’s coaching, then Silva Dos Santos returned prior to the concert. He was excited to see the students’ growth in fluidity of movement. When he left, they had been able to execute the movements, but given time to make the movement their own, they were really dancing it. Percussion students worked with Eliezer Freitas Santos along with their teachers. The music teachers consulted with Mr. Freitas Santos and decided to structure their residency differently, with the guest coming in two days a week for a longer period of time. Part of the magic of this residency was that Mr. Freitas Santos does not speak fluent English, so music became the primary language of the residency. Students gravitated to the new rhythms and learned to layer them in polyrhythmic blends. Again, their music teachers were able to observe and record student proficiency in demonstrating the rhythms. The music teachers also incorporated the Brazilian names of the rhythms into the structure of their classes and included them in listening/recognition tests. Percussion students observed the dance compositions and worked to apply their newly-learned rhythms to accompany the dancers. They accompanied the dancers in their final performance. They also learned the percussion accompaniment to The Waters of March by Antonio Carlos Jobim, and accompanied the choir in their final concert. Choir students were not included in the original proposal, but Mr. Silva Dos Santos was able to coach choral students working on The Waters of March. He worked with them both on Portuguese pronunciation and on the interplay between the rhythm of the Portuguese words and the Brazilian rhythms. Again, the students were able to demonstrate their grasp of the rhythms in a culminating performance, along with their percussion counterparts. Choral students did not, however, apply their own creative work to this performance piece. They did improvise on these rhythms in choral warm-ups and their teacher was able to assess that they were secure in this practice. Finally, Painting students were able to perform Brazilian rhythms under the guidance of Ta-Coumba Aiken, who asked students to follow his method of rhythmic painting while listening to Brazilian music. Students viewed works that Mr. Aiken had produced as décor for the Batuque performance, including painted backdrops, skirts, and poles manipulated by the dancers. Connections were made to indigenous Brazilian art styles. One painting class then created long vertical murals that were displayed in the AT and T tower’s gallery. The other class painted the skirts and poles that their dance counterparts would use in their concert. Again, the authentic culminating exhibition or performance was a significant motivator for students to demonstrate their mastery of the medium. 2: This outcome was supported more by the Academic portion of the residency. We developed an overarching metaphor of Structures and Freedoms: Interpreting the Form to help students relate the improvisational nature of Batuque (the scat-like, spoken version of Brazilian percussion) to the fluidity of racial roles in different cultures. The majority of students involved in the academic portion of the residency were 9th graders, and in class discussions, the main connection they made was to the new and different structures and freedoms of their high school experience vs. their middle school lives. They clearly understood culture on a micro-level, as organizational or school culture. After a panel discussion featuring our guest artists, some of whom are African Americans, others of Afro-Brazilian heritage, students could articulate a difference in the role of race in the two national cultures of the US and Brazil. They recognized the importance of Africanist aesthetics in the popular culture of each country. They incorporated the re-use aesthetic of the Brazilian favelas into their Green projects, and many students chose to create percussion instruments. The class was fascinated by the idea of coded messages in Brazilian music and dance/capoeira forms, and were able to relate this to what they had previously learned about African American spirituals, rhymes and quilts during the underground railroad era.