After many years training in both Dance and Theatre separately, I was thrilled to be exposed to a way of working, training and creating work for the stage and screen that incorporated dance and movement a part from the Musical Theater genre when I studied for my Master's at CalArts. When I started teaching the US Drama classes last year (my first year), I noticed right away how physical, playful and embodied most of our students here at Burke's are. As I was getting to know the school and the students, I felt that dance and movement based games and activities would be an excellent way to find an in or a hook in my Drama classes and get the students to think about acting as literal doing and being in their body. And I was right. The students immediately took to what I thought would be a simple warm up creating a "greeting" in three 8 counts and a "goodbye" in three 8 counts with a duet partner and ended up choreographing an entire dance piece as a class to a contemporary Swing song in my 7th and 8th Grade Drama Classes. It was a favored activity throughout the school year and many of the girls with gymnastics and dance skills threw themselves into their work physically, while others explored creating moments of physical comedy or distinct characters through choreography. When it came to teaching Shakespeare and focusing on Hamlet in 7th Grade, I wanted to focus on the scene where the Ghost of King Hamlet appears to Hamlet and to explore the Ghost being an ensemble character, one body fractured into several bodies and voices. I also wanted students to physically inhabit the text and create images vocally and physically that unlocked the deeper emotional truths and images of the text and attempt stay away from pantomiming the plot of what was being spoken. This was challenging yet possible. In my own life outside of Burke's, I was taking modern dance classes at ODC and Alonzo King Lines Ballet's adult program and on a Saturday in an advanced class, I ran into Jordan Wanderer who I recognized from Burke's as she taught in our afterschool classes. Jordan is a professional dancer and choreographer who has worked all around the Bay Area and attended Mills College. We immediately became excited about the possibility of working together and finding ways to explore how dance and movement can inform theater and text and vice versa and be a FUN, creative and meaningful way in to more complex texts and material for middle and high school aged students. Jordan came in twice to work with my 7th Grade Drama classes on creating a movement world or gestural landscape for Hamlet and discovering original choreography for the Ghost scene through task based movement activities. In the later half of June, I met Jordan at the dance studio 1:1 and we worked on going further with this, developing a more challenging warm up that introduces dance technique and warms up the brain and body in a sequential way. We challenged ourselves to think of ways and play with ways of teaching technique as a way of empowerment and to move students towards exploration, rather than choreographing to get it done or look cool and looked at how to stay away from pantomime in movement that is happening in tandem with the text is telling a story - how do we actually work AGAINST that urge and go more illogical to reveal something deeper? Our work focused on providing young actors with a foundation in dance technique that gives them tools and language rooted in the professional world of dance and in turn gives them physical presence on stage, confidence and grounding as a performer and a basis for creating original work. Jordan is now at Columbia University pursuing a Master's in the Science of Movement and Dance Pedagogy so it was lucky to have this opportunity to work with her and has clarified and informed much of what and how I am incorporating movement and dance into my 7th and 8th Grade Drama Classes. Below is a sped up video that shows some of our work together this summer at Alonzo King Lines Ballet.