The performing arts program provides Hamlin girls with outstanding music instruction in grades K-7 and offers elective study of dance, drama, and musical theater to seventh and eighth grade students. The performing arts teaching faculty is comprised entirely of teaching artists: as performers, directors, and choreographers we strive to infuse our teaching with the high standards and commitment of our own artistic practices. Hamlin students are exposed to artistic excellence from an early age, and they receive a substantive and broad foundation in the performing arts. Our graduates leave Hamlin having participated in all aspects of performance, from the learning and generating of material, to the various stages of rehearsal, to production and performance itself.

Theater

The Middle School theater arts program includes both a drama elective class open to the seventh and eighth grades, which produces a full-length play, and a trimester course in improvisational acting for the eighth graders, which culminates in an improvised show for a school assembly. Each fall, the drama elective class offers 12-15 students the opportunity to rehearse, produce, and perform a play for the school community. The overarching goals of the drama elective course focus on expansion of the students’ range of self-expression and creative potential; cultivation of their understanding and respect for the craft of theater; development of a strong ensemble cast; and observation, identification, and embodiment of the elements of successful performance. All eighth graders take improvisation two periods per week either winter or spring trimester. Overarching goals for the eighth grade improvisation class include encouraging active and playful involvement of students in improvised theater games and scenes; freeing up students’ imaginations from judgment and doubt in order to enable them to create dramatic work without scripts; facilitating their ability to think on their feet and desire to take creative risks in front of others; and promoting creative collaboration with partners and groups within dramatic structures and contexts.

Drama elective students consider a range of essential questions over the course of the term, including:

• What is “acting,” as opposed to “reciting” or “reading”?
• How is a play translated from the page to the stage by a collaboration of imaginations?
• How do I, the actor, use and express both my imagination and my intellect to portray an interesting, “living” character?
• What happens behind the scenes to produce a play?
• What do I discover about myself personally from rehearsing and performing a play?
• What makes a performance successful?

Improvisation students consider a range of essential questions over the course of the term, including:

• Do you need “talent” to act or improvise?
• How do I avoid censoring my imagination and develop the confidence to take risks in front of my peers?
• What is the value and power of saying “yes” in a dramatic or creative context?
• How can mistakes open up fun and creative opportunities to be enjoyed, not dreaded?
• What makes an improvised performance successful?

In both classes, teaching methods are collaborative, cooperative, and fundamentally experiential. The classes focus on active participation of students whether they are on-stage working on scenes or off-stage working on script, character, or production work or being supportive and reflective audience members. The girls are constantly engaged in performances of understanding as they rotate from off-stage work to on-stage involvement. The productions themselves are indeed major performances of understanding of the many lessons the girls have learned over the course of the term.

Music

Our philosophy of music education embraces the fact that music is one of life’s essential ingredients. It provides a venue for the human spirit to express what cannot be verbally expressed, offering profound pleasure and enjoyment; critical components of cultural heritage and individual customs, rituals and traditions; parts of the socialization process; light hearted amusement; a release opportunity for emotions and energy through a mental, physical, and emotional response to organized sound (music). Music functions as a unique vehicle of expression of feelings and emotions. It is a validation of the creative human spirit.

The Hamlin program builds on the child’s creative imagination and desire for exploration. Children have an inherent desire to generate and manipulate sounds and to eventually put them in a meaningful structure. The program seeks to allow the student to work creatively with the materials and structures of music. We encourage the girls to think artistically and explore what is means to be musical. Our students are guided through the process of this larger connection by asking essential questions:

• Why is music the universal language?
• What makes a musical artist?
• How does music enrich our lives?
• How does music reflect cultures and history?
• What are my contributions to this art form and universal experience?

We encourage the study of music to be an exploratory process within a discipline. The musical experience includes listening, singing, dancing, creating and improvising, and playing an instrument, while reading and writing the symbols that decode that language of music. The Hamlin music program promotes the growth of musical critical and creative thinking skills. The study of the reading and writing of music and musical fundamentals of rhythm, solfege, phrasing, articulation, diction, dynamics, singing, movement, creating, instrumental playing, composition, form and analysis, are integral parts of the program. The importance of the historical perspective of music is also explored.

Lower School (K –4) students receive music instruction as part of the core curriculum for 90 minutes a week. Fifth and sixth grade students receive musical instruction twice a week for 40 minutes. Seventh graders have music for a ten-week session for three times a week. Additionally, seventh and eighth grades are offered music as an elective, providing them with a venue to work on individual, solo and ensemble performance skills in small groups and in a full musical production.

Movement is a natural accompaniment to singing. Beginning in kindergarten, simple actions of running, hopping, walking, knee slapping (patsching), tapping, clapping, skipping are part of the musical expression. The performance of folk dances and play party songs are sequentially introduced to accompany the song repertoire and based on the physical motor development of the child. Movement and dances are sequentially structured to proceed from the simple to complex. Students in kindergarten are taught simple bilateral and symmetrical movement both visually and aurally. By the third grade the girls are able to use the correct right and left reversal through visual decoding.

The unaccompanied voice is the primary instrument used to experience musical elements. As the students grow in their experience and their capacity to physically manipulate or control the sounds of their own voice or an instrument, they move to higher levels of creative exploration and performance. The kindergarten students are encouraged to discover sounds such as bird whistles, traffic, hums, body sounds (hand feet, arms, chest), animal sounds, sirens, etc. Several quality literature books are incorporated to aid in this exploration. The study of sounds continues through the grades, advancing to more complex body percussion and movements, synthesizers, keyboards, ethnic instruments, and band and orchestra instruments. The students are led to improvise, compose, and arrange musical sounds and symbols through exploring the forms of music such as the rondo form (ABACADA). Further study of the sounds and music of other cultures and ethnicities enable the student to trace the historical and cultural origins of musical genres.

Instrumental music is introduced in the kindergarten program through unpitched and pitched percussion instruments and continues through grade eight. Body percussion is introduced in kindergarten with simple clapping games extending to more complex patterns throughout the grades. The barred Orff instruments are introduced in kindergarten with simple ostinatos and bourdons leading to more complex patterns and improvising in the Middle School. The tone chimes are introduced in third grade, allowing the students begin the study of chordal functions leading to more advanced chordal analysis and progressions in the upper grades. The soprano and alto recorder is introduced in the fifth grade allowing the students to work in ensemble groups and allowing for more individual assessment of music literacy skills.

Quality choral music is a mainstay of the Hamlin music program. Students are exposed to quality choral music through the study of folk songs (spirituals, sea shanties, work songs), composed music of great masters and contemporary composers. Students are led to make connections to history and culture. Opera is studied as a musical form. The unit concludes with a production at an all-school assembly of an abridged opera performed by fourth grade students in conjunction with members of the San Francisco Opera Company. The Composer of the Week program highlights a brief listening selection each week.

Further ensemble work is directed through the fourth grade Chorus involving all fourth grade students for an hour a week and an early morning Middle School elective chorus open to grades 5-8 meeting twice a week for 45 minutes. The After School Instrumental Academy further affords the students an opportunity to choose an instrument and receive private instruction by a professional instrumentalist. Instruments offered have included violin, piano, percussion, guitar, saxophone, recorder and flute.

The Hamlin music program encourages students to be reflective on their own process of making music (self- assessment) as well as constructively critiquing their peers (peer assessment). The teacher and class discussions, focus on the students taking ownership of the process and performances. We seek to provide performance opportunities developmentally suited to the age and readiness of the individual child. Evidence of the growth in confidence, esteem, and musical and performance skills can be seen beginning the K Thanksgiving Assembly through the seventh & eighth grade musical. Teacher and students review tapes and videos to assess performances. Students are asked for ways to improve (self-assessment) their performance as well as the over all ensemble performance (peer assessment.) The over arching goal of our assessment is to ask the students to take individual responsibility for being a musician working to incorporate the through line What Makes a Musical Artist.

The music program provides the students with the necessary skills to achieve a fuller, more enriching life with an increased understanding and appreciation of the connections among music, language art, history mathematics, physical education, and science. Hamlin girls learn to answer the essential question “how does music enrich our lives?” The students graduate with a diverse exposure and understanding of the joys of music with an understanding of the language of music. They acquire acquired the musical skills and knowledge to contribute to the world of music both as participants and discriminating listeners. Our students leave Hamlin possessing the skills to ultimately answer the question: What are my contributions to this art form and universal experience?

Dance

The Middle School dance program aims to provide students with embodied, experiential understanding of the multifaceted nature of movement, along with appreciation for the multiple roles dance plays in our world. Dance classes offer the girls the opportunity to delve into the realm of the kinesthetic and to connect it to the cognitive, the creative, and the critical. The program operates from the firm conviction that dance and movement can help adolescent girls find voices that are embodied, expressive, analytical and compassionate; our curriculum seeks to offer the girls tools that will support them as they navigate the demands of an increasingly complex world. We believe that the body is an essential part of our human identity, and we are committed to the premise that strong, articulate, and flexible instruments help us to meet the myriad challenges life offers.

All seventh grade students take dance for one trimester as part of a required fine arts class that features study of dance, music, and art. The dance section of the course introduces students to dance improvisation and investigates the African and European influences on the music, dance, and religious expression of the Americas. Seventh and eighth grade students may also participate in the fall dance elective, a choreography workshop that focuses on the creation of an original dance piece through exploration of creative movement and dance technique, and in the spring musical theater elective, which offers further exposure to dance. All three courses strive to help students explore and expand their expressive ranges through investigation of the movement event and its component parts: Body, Effort (the dynamic, affective aspect of all movement), Shape, and Space.** Each class seeks to provide students with experience of the vitality and sense of aliveness dance can offer and to foster understanding of movement as a means of knowing and communicating in our world. All dance courses consider the role dance plays in culture, while developing students’ aesthetic senses and appreciation of the relationship between content and form. The overarching goal of the program is for each girl to investigate and deepen her relationship to herself, to others, and to her environment.

To that end, dance classes at Hamlin ask two fundamental and essential questions:

• How can dance and movement connect us to ourselves, to each other, and to our world?
• How can dancing and dance-making (choreography) nourish and enliven our bodies, minds, and spirits?

Students in dance classes at Hamlin gain experiential and theoretical knowledge of the body and how it moves functionally and expressively. They explore the way the body shapes itself, and they play with the affective and dynamic qualities of movement, including weight, time, and flow. They discover the primacy of breath, and they grow to appreciate the support that breath offers all movement. They explore space, in all its diversity, and they work with direction, level, three-dimensionality, and spatial intent. Students learn choreographed material from a range of styles, and they create their own original movement phrases, experimenting with manipulation of both through use of various choreographic techniques, including repetition, canon, ABA form, juxtaposition, the shifting of spatial orientation, and the matching of different Effort qualities and music with different material. Students learn basic improvisational skills, and they learn how and when to use them to choreographic advantage.

The dance section of the seventh grade fine arts course focuses specifically on the role of dance in West African culture and religious practice, tracing its influence on the music, dance, and religion of the Americas via the institution of slavery. Students consider the impact of colonialism on the cultural expression of the peoples of West Africa (primarily those of the Yoruba culture), Brazil, and the United States, focusing on the reciprocal influences of European and African culture in the New World. The girls learn Yoruban-derived movement, and they study European social dances as practiced by plantation owners in the American South. The term culminates in study of the cakewalk, a uniquely American vernacular dance form that combines African and European elements into cultural satire.

The dance program’s teaching methods are varied, employing different modalities, and they are fundamentally experiential. The dance teacher is a certified practitioner of Laban-Bartenieff Movement Analysis (LMA), and the Laban-Bartenieff work frames her approach, along with commitment to the Teaching for Understanding (TFU) model and cooperative learning. Lessons emphasize kinesthetic exploration of movement, feeling, and ideas, seeking to provide embodied familiarity with a concept before asking for a critical response. The question “how do you feel?” helps students arrive at embodied and experiential understanding before moving to the explicitly discursive. Classes are designed to include a lively interplay among movement, feeling, and critical thinking. For example, students learn Yoruban movement and then describe how it makes them feel. Once they have connected to the feelings the movement evokes, they find it hard to imagine having the movement taken away from them, as was the case for enslaved Africans living in the antebellum South. Their embodied, felt experience helps the girls to walk in the shoes of the people we study, and it equips them for analysis that has meaning. Class time includes movement, discussion, listening, watching of videos, and personal reflection. The girls regularly tackle choreographic problems and consider problems of history and culture.

Performances of understanding happen daily: the instructors present a lesson, and it is often visually apparent whether or not it has been understood. Students also have opportunities to perform their work for each other and to share it with the school community. The girls learn the differences among the various stages in the choreographic and performance processes, and they come to understand the value of each stage, from germination, to generation, to evolution and development, to production.

Musical Theater

The musical theater program provides participating seventh and eighth grade students with an intensive introduction to musical theater performance and production. Each spring the class offers 30-40 students the opportunity to participate in the rehearsal and production of a Broadway musical. Team taught by the dance, drama, and music teachers, the overarching goals of the course focus on the following areas: creative expression; development of the craft of musical theater; unlocking students’ creative potential; trusting and following the evolution of the imaginative process; understanding and appreciating historical and cultural aspects of the genre; reflecting on individual and collective creative efforts; observing and identifying elements of successful performance.

Students consider a range of essential questions over the course of the term, including:

• How can exploration and expansion of our expressive ranges enhance our ability to communicate?
• How can I contribute to and serve the creation of the artistic “IT”?
• What can I discover about myself and my abilities?
• Where did musical theater come from, where are we now, and where are we taking it?
• What can I do to make “IT” better?
• What makes a performance successful?

By the end of their semester-long immersion in the process of moving a production from the “page to the stage,” students understand the fundamental value of self-expression, both improvisational and scripted, and of musical theater’s specific demands for a larger-than-life affect. Students learn to identify and expand their expressive ranges through exercises that explore their relationship to self, to others, and to the theatrical environment. Improvisation plays a significant role in all aspects of rehearsal and production: we equip the girls with improvisational techniques and strategies that support them as they tackle the range of choreographic, dramatic, and musical problems the musical form poses.

Throughout the term, students study many of the elements central to the development of the craft of musical theater: performance focus, the care and cultivation of their instruments, the role of ensemble, structural analysis of scripts and scores, the hidden features and importance of space, and the technical aspects of production. The girls learn to recognize the importance of humor as a creative tool, and they discover that time and time again mistakes can be converted into creative advantage. Our students also learn that their efforts are part of the historical tradition of American musical theater; we consider the myths surrounding the genre, and we engage in dramaturgical analysis of every musical we produce. Last but not least, the girls learn how to reflect on their own contributions to the production and its process, acquiring tools for analysis of their own efforts and of musical theater performance in general.

Our teaching methods are collaborative, cooperative, and fundamentally experiential. Each of the three teachers brings her own disciplinary expertise to the class, whether in dance, music, or theater. We devise discipline-specific exercises, and we also emphasize and model the interdisciplinary nature of the form. The class focuses on active participation: students move, dance, read, sing, speak, watch, imagine, listen, react, reflect, and analyze daily. Girls are constantly engaged in performances of understanding, whether demonstrating accuracy of musical pitch, or understanding of the theatrical objectives of a scene, or moving with choreographic clarity. Production week and the performances themselves are indeed major performances of understanding of the many lessons the girls have learned over the course of the term.

Perhaps the greatest strength of the musical theater program is the experience it offers our students of creating collectively, even in the midst of scheduling challenges. The girls have a wonderful time, notwithstanding the demands of deadlines and the pressures of production. “The musical,” as it is known at school, is truly one of the high points of the Hamlin school year.