Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Martha Graham doodle and Arts education





Marha Graham Google doodle

Another beautiful Google doodle interactive! This time, Google celebrates the 117th Anniversary of Marha Graham.

Google has marked her 117th birthday with a bespoke Google Doodle that has been animated by Ryan Woodward inspired by Blakeley White-McGuire, a principal dancer with the Martha Graham Dance Company, dancing a phrase of iconic Graham moves designed by Janet Eilber, Artistic Director of the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance.


If you initially visit the Google homepage you will be greeted by a blank screen, but after a short pause, the animation of a figure styled on Martha Graham (and her choreography) gracefully dances across the screen to spell out six letters writing the word Google in swooping movements and turns. Beautiful!

"How do you fit seven decades of American innovation into 15 seconds? That was the challenge when Google asked us to collaborate on a Google Doodle to celebrate Martha Graham’s birthday."

The real story behing Martha Graham's Google doodle is here. Don't miss the story of the 5 figures styled on Martha Graham's perfomances.



Marha Graham Google doodle

Martha Graham (May 11, 1894 - April 1, 1991) was an American dancer and choreographer whose name became synonymous with 'modern' or 'contemporary' dance.

"Her fierce choreography sometimes amazed and sometimes horrified, but in it she embodied modern dance — arrogantly and spectacularly."

Terry Teachout, Time Magazine


Martha Graham's influence on dance is comparable to Picasso's influence on painting, Stravinsky on music.

In the 1920s and 30s she created a completely new style of dancing and revolutionized dance and theater worldwide.

Graham's choreography, techniques and routines form the basis of many modern styles of dance. 
Martha Graham (collage)

She performed since 14 years old, she become a dancer at the age of 22, and left the stage at the age of 75 when she gave her final performance in 1969.

Graham choreographed more than 180 works, looking on enviously later in life at young dancers performing in her signature style, based upon contraction and release of the body.
Her legacy lives on in the techniques used by dance companies around the globe, including the Martha Graham Dance Company, which has continued to develop contemporary dance since its founding in 1926, often rooting works in contemporary social contexts.


“I have spent all my life with dance and being a dancer. It’s permitting life to use you in a very intense way. Sometimes it is not pleasant. Sometimes it is fearful. But nevertheless it is inevitable.”
Martha Graham – WikiPedia


Twitter is a buzz with famous quotes from Martha Graham and her supporters over the years.


Education:


As you can see, if you are reading some of my posts, Grand Finale: Dream comes true25 Years of Pixar in the schoolWorld Day Dance in the School Fighting Kids Obesity... DancingI think Arts education programs may be on file at schools. 


"In a world of extraordinary complexity, a premium is placed on one's ability to quickly process massive amounts of wildly varying types of information. Musical instruction helps young people develop the brain capacity to process a lot of information and to organize and present it."

There are an enormous group of students well gifted who can't afford early artistic education.

Students attending high-poverty schools have less access to arts instruction than their peers in more affluent communities.

Pressure to improve test scores in other content areas is another top barrier to Arts education. 

Still it is prooved that Arts, music, dance are a wonderful therapy for hyperactiv kids and presenting concentration problems.

Arts give them the concentration discipline and the pleasure to express with creativiy.

It's true that a lot of schools do not have even one full-time-equivalent arts specialist, although secondary schools are much more likely than elementary schools to employ specialists. 

At the elementary level, Arts instruction is often left to regular classroom teachers, who rarely  have adequate training.

Signal to teachers, parents, and students that the Arts are a core subject by providing professional development for teachers and establishing assessment and accountability systems for arts education. 

It would be important to give a different meaning of Arts on the school curricula and to have good Arts teachers providing professional first development for kids who could, in a different level of education, continue the Arts studies in Arts Higher Schools. 


G-Souto
11.05.2011
Copyright © 2010G-Souto'sBlog, gsouto-digitalteacher.blogspot.com®


References and Resources for Educators:

Keep Arts in the schools

Marha Grham's coreograpy embodied by a Google doodle

The Graham's Center celebratates our Google doodle

The Time/ Artists

Wikipedia/ Martha Graham


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