Educating Risa

Gareth’s class gave their performance during the last half of class as well. This class was called “Performing Arts Combo” and included both dance/movement and drama, and was for 5 and 6 year olds. As Gareth just turned 5 in January right before the class started, he was the smallest one. But my goodness was he funny!

They class began by showing us some of the things they had done. They began with freeform movement to music, and when the music stopped, they were to freeze in “an interesting pose.” Gareth got right into it:

Then then went on to various type of movement based on animals: animals in the sea, animals in the forest, animals in the sky. When they froze the teacher would ask them what animal they were, and the kids would answer simply: “a bird,” “a shark,” “a deer”. Except, of course, my little comedian. Here he is moving like “a type of bird, and the type of bird I am being is called a raptor.” This elicited a few chuckles from the audience:

Then the kids demonstrated a game they played often in class: clay and artist. The kids pair off, and one kid in the artist, and one the lump of clay. The artist is to arrange the clay in an interesting pose, and then tell the class when they made. Some answers: “a tree", “a star,” “a cat”. Here’s what Gareth created with the girl with her back to the audience:

 

And Gareth’s explanation of what he made? “An Irish Dancer…(at this point the girl nearly toppled over from being off-balance with one foot in the air in a crazy pose)…who doesn’t know how to dance.” Cracked the audience (and teacher) right up!

Then they were to move to the music in the form of the animal they were going to be in their little play. So we had some dolphins swimming gently, and elephant walking, etc. And Gareth? He sat on the floor in the middle of everything, and began slapping his flippers together and barking: “Ork! Ork! Ork!” Totally into his character, the seal. Again, lots of the adults in the audience cracked up, and I started getting the “Is that YOUR son?” questions.

Then the kids began their play (which the teacher narrated): A Water Mystery. All the animals were asleep in the zoo when the elephant came and drank all the water! He’d had too much salty popcorn earlier. A detective and zookeeper look for clues, then confront the elephant, who agrees to share the water and spurts it back out of his trunk so the seals and dolphins can swim again, and the other animals can drink.

The kids then took their bows. Here is Gareth demonstrating his seal clap for Dad afterwards. Can you tell he LOVED this class? He told me he wants to do drama again; in fact, “I don’t ever want to not do drama!”