The children celebrated a fantastic Arts Week this week with performances based on famous artists. They brought artwork to life with their dances showing precision and focus as well as fantastic collaboration. Children came together in each key stage to perform songs, sending a powerful message that we are all unique individuals and together we can Aspire, Believe, Create and Achieve.
Reception & KS1
Dances (in order)
Puffins: Antoni Gaudi (1852 – 1926) was a man of great pride, great creativity, and great spirituality. His contribution to architecture was to break from the established order in form and structure. The dance captures the shapes, colours and energy of his Sun mosaic.
Hawks: Claude Monet (1840 – 1926) was the leading French Impressionist landscape painter. However, the term ‘Impressionist’ was first used as an insult in response to an exhibition of new paintings in 1874. As in the painting, the dance uses reflection as a theme and explores the movement quality of water.
Year 1: Raoul Dufy (1877 – 1953) became known as one of the painters in the movement ‘Les Fauves’ which literally translates to ‘the wild beasts’. In their dance, 1Y work with shape and movement to convey the sea and the structure of boats. In addition to his work as a painter, water-colourist and printmaker, Dufy created textile designs (Elephants and Leopards) that were used by the most famous haute couture designers of the time. 1F dance with the solidity of elephants and the grace of leopards.
Year 2: Georgia O’Keeffe (1887 – 1986) became interested in art from a very early age but lacked self-confidence. She went on to become one of the first female painters to achieve worldwide acclaim from critics and the general public. Although best known for her flower paintings, she used abstraction of things she saw in everyday life. Sky Above the Clouds is influenced by the views she saw from plane windows in later life. 2E capture the light airiness of this work and is inspired by its circular shapes. 2T’s dance responds to the contrasting geometric shapes within Black Door – one in a series of paintings O’Keeffe completed of the exterior of her home in New Mexico.
Key Stage 2
Dances (in order)
3C: Zaha Hadid (1950-2016) was born in Iraq and consistently pushed boundaries, both social and artistic, to reach the peak of her profession. In the process, she encouraged a new generation of female architects to dream big. The dance combines the fluidity of her initial sketch with the strength of the Spiral Tower.
3W: Grayson Perry (born 1960). The Frivolous Now, is decorated with phrases and buzzwords that somehow epitomise the spirit of our times – among them CCTV. The dance uses the idea of surveillance and spying as a starting point. Look for how the children spell out CCTV using different parts of their bodies.
4W: Alberto Giacometti (1901 – 1966) was one of the great painter-sculptors of the twentieth century. A restless innovator, he experimented with a range of styles, art historical sources and materials, whilst retaining a unique, immediately recognisable artistic vision. The dance captures the movement and stillness as seen in Falling Man.
4C: Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) is celebrated in Mexico for her attention to Mexican and indigenous culture and by feminists for her depiction of the female experience and form. In The Two Fridas, Kahlo represents the two sides of her own persona. The dance reflects the duality of character.
5M: Mark Bradford (born 1961) is a contemporary African-American artist, working in Los Angeles. His work often displays the atrocities of race and poverty. The dance opens with the depiction of conflict that is sometimes a result of inner-city tension.
5F: Khadija Saye (1992 – 2017) Born in London, Saye lived with her Gambian mother in Grenfell Tower and worked in the same space. They both perished in the fire of 2017. At the time of her death, her work was being exhibited as part of a showcase of emerging artists at the Venice Biennale – one of the highest accolades an artist can achieve. 5F’s dance represents strength and determination. Look for the dancers’ creative use of the rolling of dice, symbolic of the fickleness of chance and odds in life.
Year 6: Cornelia Parker (born 1956) is an English sculptor and installation artist. ‘I operate very often in these ‘frozen moments’ where there’s been lots of action, but this a sort of quiet corner of that.’ The dance, like Cold Dark Matter, is dramatic and delicate, powerful and intricate with 6A forming the shadows of 6H’s exploded shards.