June 20-June 24, 2023
Voices from the Field Arts Academy provides outstanding arts experiences for middle school in Washington State’s migrant education programs. OSPI believes that their experiences in meaningful arts classes will both inspire them to find their own strengths and creativity and be an avenue through which increased literacy and academic development takes place.
For this program, Centrum collaborates with the Office of the Superintendent of Public Education’s (OSPI) and schools from around Washington State. This year’s in-person program will serve 45 students as they dive into Theater, Visual Art, Song Writing, Music, Poetry, and Dance for four days, guided by an outstanding artist faculty and the idea that the arts reveal essential insights and ways of learning that can resonate meaningfully in the lives of young people.
Creative Rhythms, with Eduardo Mendonca
Students will create their own rhythms in an intuitive, spontaneous way. Brazilian instruments will be available as well as buckets, plastic oil pans and anything that can make sound. Learn to play traditional and contemporary Brazilian grooves like Samba, Baião and Samba-Reggae. And enjoy playing as an ensemble with an instructor who has performed for celebrities such as Nelson Mandela, Pope John II and the 14th Dalai Lama!
Folklorico Dance, with Garcia Luna & Olivas Frederico
Learn traditional Mexican folkloric dance in this class with Luna. This dance is high energy with lots of movement and footwork! Folklorico is a combination of Mexican culture and history translated into rhythm and body movement. Dancing as a group, we work on coordination and expression. You’ll learn dances from the Costa Chica Region of the state of Guerrero focused on the style known as Chilenas. To find the beginning of this style you have to go to South America and Chile. The dances were introduced to Guerrero during the California “gold rush” in which Chilean ships stopped in Costa Chica for supplies, allowing the sailors to share their lively dances with locals, who took the dances and made them their own.
Illustrate Your Voice (Drawing & Bookmaking), with Sabrina Chacon-Barajas
Telling our stories is complex and beautiful. We will create a personal narrative that brings our voice and experience to life using 2D and 3D elements of fine arts in an accordion book.
Theater Creation, with Marisol Rosa-Shapiro
Explore a variety of theatrical means for telling stories. Our emphasis will be on playful exploration that employs the poetic body, voice, and imagination to create brand new, collaborative works of theater. Participants will wear a variety of creative hats, including actor, director, and writer.
Music & Roots with Joe Seamons
Learn to hear and play instruments and songs that laid the foundation for American music as we know it! This class will give you experience playing music with others on an instrument of your choice–guitar, banjo, fiddle and mandolin, singing and percussion are all options for students, beginners are welcome.
Wearable Creatures with Margie McDonald
Bring Giants to life. Students will work together to create large puppets using simple materials such as cardboard, wire, fabric, sticks and tape. The Giants come to life on stage for the Student Showcase, accompanied by an invented narrative.
FACULTY BIOS
Sabrina Chacon-Barajas
Sabrina Chacon-Barajas graduated from Seattle Pacific University with a BA in Studio Art and is currently working on her M.Ed at UW Bothell. Her artwork incorporates multi-media art to represent the intersectional identity of being a woman of color from immigrant parents. Sabrina is a teaching artist that cares about representation in the classroom through the power of the arts. She centers her curriculum around anti-racist teaching practices and critical thinking. Sabrina speaks Spanish and empowers her students to speak and write in their language by being transparent in her experience as a first-generation person who is more comfortable with translanguaging meaning using Spanglish to communicate. Sabrina has taught with various art programs in the PNW such as REEL GRRLS, SAM, Gage Academy of the Arts, South Park Community Center, Ailey Camp, Pratt Fine Arts, and Centrum in Port Townsend. Sabrina has also presented and done workshops for Seattle Public Schools, Highline Public Schools and conferences like ITAC and the Bridge Conference.
Luna Garcia
Luna Garcia started dancing Folklorico at age seven with the dance group Joyas Mestizas. In 2007, she started teaching with Joyas Mestizas, and she started dancing with Bailadores de Bronce. Dancing and teaching with both organizations, she has been able to promote and present the beauty of Folklorico throughout the Seattle area. She has taken classes and workshops with renowned Folklorico teachers such as Jose Tena from New Mexico State University and Samuel Cortez from Los Lupeños, San Jose.
Eduardo Mendonça
Eduardo Mendonça —musician, producer and composer—is a native of Salvador, Bahia, Brazil.
Eduardo received his degree in Arts Education from the Music Institute of the Catholic University of Salvador.
He is the Music Director for iBuildBridges Foundation, and is the Artistic Director for the international performance ensemble Show Brazil!
Michelle J. Rodriguez
Michelle J. Rodriguez is an artist who performs and writes in the worlds of music and theater. Raised in the Pacific Northwest and Kentucky by her Puerto Rican parents, Ms. Rodriguez was raised in Vermont, Chicago and NYC by her communities, inspiring her to explore kids-of-immigrants stories, divine femininity, intuition, healing and spaces in-between. Her music project MICHA became a finalist for NPR’s 2018 Tiny Desk Contest with her song “Nena Nena Nena,” praised for a “bilingual set spanning laid-back southern soul and Latin pop flare” (NPR).
George Rodriguez
George Rodriguez received a BFA in ceramics from the University of Texas El Paso and an MFA from the University of Washington. As a recipient of a Bonderman Travel Fellowship he traveled the world through most of 2010 visiting 26 countries in the span of 10 months. The Museum of Northwest Art recently recognized him as an Emerging Artist Luminary.
George has shown extensively throughout the Pacific Northwest and beyond and his work can be found in the permanent collection of the National Mexican Museum of Art in Chicago. George is represented by Foster/White Gallery in Seattle, WA.
Marisol Rosa-Shapiro
Marisol Rosa-Shapiro is a New York and Seattle-based performer, director, teaching artist, and creator of original works of theater. She is a graduate of Princeton University and of Giovanni Fusetti’s Lecoq-based Helikos School of Theatre Creation in Florence, Italy.
Her specialties include mask theater, mime, clown, commedia dell’arte, improvisation, physical comedy, movement-and ensemble-based creation and more. Marisol has been a director, assistant director and producer for numerous theatres, art centers and schools throughout the country.
This program is generously funded by the Washington State Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction. Additional sponsors include ArtsWA, The Baker Foundation, Jubilation Foundation, the Congdon Hanson Family, and nearly a thousand individual donors whose generosity celebrates the power of creativity to change lives.