DANCEpiration

This full-group activity uses music, sound and visuals from three NYC-based companies—RudduR Dance, Ishita Mili / IMGE Dance and Seán Curran Company—to help kids explore emotion, community and storytelling through movement.

Materials Needed: images from New Victory Dance 2025: Program C

1. Gather students in a circle and tell them that they are about to embark on an emotional journey by exploring the imagery from a few dance companies.
2. Show images from each dance company (see the second page of the attached handout). Have a brief discussion about each photo. Ask kids questions like: What do kids see? What do they notice and wonder about?
3. Next, ask kids to stay in a full group or find their own space in the room. Then, as you show images from each company, begin to play different styles of music. Invite them to activate their emotions by becoming living statues, striking a pose representative of a unique feeling, emotion or range of emotions inspired by the photo(s) they’re seeing. For example, if a photo and its accompanying music sounds or feels mysterious, they might strike an inquisitive pose or perhaps cower in fear. Hold space for their imaginations to run free as they become a gallery of emotion-inspired sculptures.
4. Ask volunteers to share their chosen pose or sequence of poses with the group, explaining which photo and piece of music inspired their pose and why.
5. Next, point students to chart paper located in four different parts of the room, each labeled with different emotions (e.g., Sadness, Curiosity, Anger, Wonder).
6. Ask students to walk to the emotion that most accurately matches the pose they created. Note: If students created more than one pose, you might choose to move through this step more than once.
7. Finally, invite them to stand near the chart paper that represents the emotion they expect to feel while watching each dance piece in New Victory Dance. As before, if students feel pulled to more than one emotion, hold space for them to move within that spectrum and facilitate a conversation about that range of emotions.
8. Gather the students back in a circle and take time to reflect on this physical and emotional exploration.

Reflection Questions:

• What were some of your favorite moments from today’s activity?
• What was it like to explore emotions through gestures and poses?
• How do you think the emotions you felt while examining photos and listening to music might evolve while watching these live dance pieces?