A Joyful Activity

That voice inside my head! It’s there for all of us. We just have to listen. Then our job is to follow through on the inspiration. Those little nuggets of inspiration, nearly every one of them, are gifts. When we follow through and breathe life into the ideas we have, they become real, and then those manifested ideas, in turn, become our gifts to the world.

The fact of the matter is – as far as creativity goes – the more one immerses oneself in it, the more fulfilled and authentic one becomes. It is a joyful activity. You know when time stops and you don’t want to be interrupted you are on the right track. Those are my words of wisdom du jour.

Now – nursery rhymes. Why nursery rhymes? Because they are the very beginning of story telling.

When I began my intense research and was looking for rhymes to stage I found out that there was a plethora of material just waiting to be theatricalized! I mean, we’ve always seen nursery rhymes brought to life through illustrations in breathtaking, gorgeous, artistic ways, and they’ve occasionally been animated, but, never “acted” out or “choreographed”.  This is odd because nursery rhymes are inherently rhythmical, musical, and action oriented; almost like mini musicals. I wanted to bring something new and fresh to the nursery rhyme table; to see what else was out there worthy of a pair of tap shoes, Pointe shoes, or hip hop!

I began the journey of my search starting with a list of about 500 nursery rhymes that I edited down to 30. My criterion was that they had to be visual, dramatic, and rhythmically interesting. It was a child like process. One of my students, Brynn Bromley (who was a very important part of this process) and I sat on the floor of my performing arts studio and worked on the rhymes for about a month. We used simple hand held musical instruments to enhance the rhythm for some, some we simply sang and others I felt needed updating or tweaking with additional original dialogue. In general, for each rhyme, we played around with the rhythms, repetition, and tempos until we found, what we thought, were a perfect match.

Finally, the rhymes had to be something I could frame, theatricalize, and choreograph from the waist down. No faces. I wanted the focus to be on the dance and the rhythm. This was also a practical decision based on budget; if I had framed my shots head to toe I would need a much larger cast, hair, makeup, makeup artist, and actors who could act, sing, and dance. The budget would have quadrupled. I knew I was taking an artistic risk, but, it was also an artistic challenge. Once we did a test I thought, “This is different, fun, creative, and slightly cutting edge.” We moved forward and I was convinced kids would love it and imagine themselves inside the rhyme and dance instead of simply being observers.

My goal, always, is to inspire children to not just be exposed to the arts, but to become involved in the arts. When they are involved in the arts they learn to hear their own creative voice; to express that voice from an authentic place, and become brave enough to share their gifts with the world.