By Sherry Teitelbaum

Days 6 and 7 consisted of two days of intense, creative devising as the young people experimented with the puppets they had constructed and painted in the first week. Kindergarten, first and second graders discovered all the movements they could make with their shrimp hand puppets, buck-toothed beavers, hot pink and orange fish, laughing gull rod puppets and a supple piece of striped blue cloth representing Newtown Creek. Third graders explored how to make their trees, houses and skyscrapers dance, transforming an open playing space into a crowded cityscape. Fourth and fifth graders continued to find movements and poses that expressed their four community interest groups: artists, teachers, business people and military. Then they explored how to build a giant human scale with their bodies that could weigh competing community needs. Normally we devise outside in the school’s playground, but rain drove us into a large basement cafeteria space for these sessions (the very space we will use for the public performance in case of rain on Thursday afternoon, August 15!). Creative cacophony reigned as small groups worked simultaneously with Kevin, Sherry and Heather in different parts of the room, then joined together to share what they had crafted. At one point in Day 7, the cafeteria reverberated with the voices of the three facilitators and the camp counselors coaching their groups, gleeful giggles, a chorus of “tick tocks” and “happy dance,” and circus music which Kevin played on his smart phone to inspire silly walks and an accelerated tempo. By the end of the two days we had established a movement vocabulary and tried out some preliminary sequencing. The challenge for tomorrow: how can we tell a strong, clear story in each of the three parts of Tides of Change?