About 20 students between kindergarten and third grade at Longmont’s Flagstaff Academy hopped, skipped, waved their feet and posed Thursday morning as part of an open studio dance period.
David Reuille, director and choreographer for Apex Dance, led the group. Reuille and company dancer Elise Zanotti are halfway into a two-week residency at Flagstaff.
The residency program is in partnership with the Xilinx Educational Ecosystem and Think 360 Arts.
In the morning studio period, Reuille played an electronic dance track and divided the kids into two groups on either side of the gym. They practiced their entrances — each running or skipping or cartwheeling out onto the makeshift stage.
Ava Hubbard, 6, and Ella James, 6, skipped together to center stage and posed with their arms skyward. Maxwell Mieras, 8, ran to the middle and held a breakdance pose with his elbow on the ground and his feet in the air.
“OK, who has an idea for a move that we can add to our dance?” Reuille asked the group.
One of the boys raised his hand and demonstrated what he called a corkscrew, where he sat on the floor and twisted his feet first to one side and then the other.
The kids immediately tried the corkscrew and integrated it into their fast-paced routine.
Reuille said the residency benefits his choreography because kids can come up with moves that adults wouldn’t imagine.
“Kids don’t have the same reservations as adults. They have different reservations sometimes, but they can come up with unique and creative ideas,” Reuille said. “The hardest thing for an artist is to come up with new ideas, and you come up with new ideas by coming up with challenges you have to accommodate.”
Zanotti said she tells the students that the morning studio session is “to help us make up dances.”
After the morning dance studio, Zanotti and Reuille were set to teach content-oriented courses where they would help the students connect concepts in class with dance.
“With the kindergarteners, we are working on a lesson about farm animals that includes the needs for farm animals and the needs for crops,” Reuille said.
Zanotti demonstrated a move for that concept, spreading her arms wide for “gather up the hay” and bringing them together again for “and tie it with a string.”
Reuille said the moves can help students connect with the material.
“Connecting the classes to the senses and adding a sense of whimsy while they’re connecting can really drive home the lesson. It’s like when you hear a song from 30 years ago, you’re transported back to a memory and you can smell a certain smell and visualize a certain place,” Reuille said.
Wayne Granger, executive director of Flagstaff Academy, said that the school has been working with Xilinx’s educational ecosystem program for 10 years.
The program functions on the “it takes a village” philosophy, looping in community partners like the Colorado Mountain Club or the Research Area For Teaching to give kids a well-rounded education.
Before Reuille started his residency on Monday, another dance company performed a history of hip-hop for Flagstaff students in the fourth through eighth grades. A performance artist was in residency at one time, acting out scenes from history classes, Granger added.
“It goes toward developing the whole child and not just the academic or what we perceive to be the technology side of education,” Granger said. “The ability to be expressive and creative — to be successful and interested in the arts — can improve academic success.”
Karen Antonacci: 303-684-5226, antonaccik@times-call.com or twitter.com/ktonacci
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