A lot has happened since our last blog update in October.  We celebrated Thanksgiving, the Holiday Season, the New Year, and launched our Winter Showcase in partnership with The Design Museum of Chicago.  We also saw many of our Advanced Arts Seniors exhibit work in the All City Senior Portfolio Show, and even had two of our own Advanced Arts Students; Abby Moon-Sarudi of Animation & Sequential Arts, and Victoria Mac of Drawing & Painting help introduce the exhibition on Youtube Live.  After the Holiday Break, everyone hit the ground running to finish the second quarter of the year off on a high note!  Let's check in, and see what has happened in our classrooms this past month...

January has been a busy month for Animation & Sequential Arts.  First Year students have been working on world creation concept art, focusing specifically on background art.  First year students have been learning to create worlds that feel real, fleshed out, and lived in; while also learning illustrative techniques to utilize in Adobe Photoshop.  Second Year students have been working the entire month on a long term, large scale project to independently publish a large-scale Zine.  Each Zine will be at least 20 pages upon completion, and students were asked to focus on multi-frame page formatting.  The first year students are now finishing up their background art creations, and will be joining the second year students in learning about Zines and Mini-Comics.  Second year students will act as class leaders to help instructors teach the very physical concept of Zines remotely. 

The students in Advanced Culinary Arts continue to amaze us with not just their culinary skills, but with their creative talents, their care and integrity towards how they treat each other, their willingness to share, their ability to go with the flow, and their intense wisdom, for being so young.
This quarter, we eased back in and did a mix of creative culinary activities to spark new understandings of old culinary terminology and technique, as well as the introduction of a little more. We also explored topics in social justice in the food world and spent a few weeks really having great conversations about how the farming and food industry can do better, and what we can do.
We’ve also had a few “Chopped Challenges”, including a Ramen Challenge, a Historical Menu Challenge that a few teens brought to life, and an Eggcelent challenge using...you guessed it...eggs.
This class is an absolute pleasure to teach!

What began as a sprint has become a marathon of on-line teaching, blended with authentic learning and creativity from around the globe.  AAP Dance students are learning new technologies and connecting them with authentic learning through their recent creation: “Exquisite Corpse.” This was originally a pick-up game or practice where one person picks up where the previous one left off.
 
Inspired by filmmaker and dance professor Mitchell Rose, AAP’s dance students created their own version of, “Exquisite Corps”, where the dancers became contemporary choreographers, passing the dance along to each other.  Each dancer began their movement with an action or position that ended the previous dance.  The dances are just a few seconds in length and happen in different locations.  The editing and camera create a seamless connection between each choreographer.  The AAP Dance students, now choreographers, join a global group of revered choreographers who have been part of their own,“Exquisite Corps.”
 
Check out the final results here:

After a well needed Holiday Break, the Modern Band students returned and are ready to COMPOSE! Our class is going to participate in the Deep Dish Festival curated by the Columbia College of Chicago in which their works will be showcased and workshopped by professionals. Said festival is curated by the  Grammy-winning guitarist Isaiah Sharkey (John Mayer, D’Angelo, and Paul Simon). Our Modern Band students received professional recording equipment to be able to pursue their compositional projects for this Festival thanks to our AAP administrators Brian and Melisa! Their studio bundles included a microphone and an interface that you can see in the pictures below. We can’t wait to share with everyone all the creativity of our students! They are all hard at work writing lyrics, learning chords, coming up with beats, and practicing the parts to their very original songs. This unit segues into future composition and music tech units that will guide the students to our Spring Showcase and Original Music Exposition.

Students came back from our winter break and hit the ground running, creating some wonderful, sophisticated 4 part chorales.  We’ve dug deep into the rules of creating a captivating and interesting melody as well as the intricacies of harmonizing using alto, tenor, and bass.  We’ve also been spending more time training our ears!  Part of music theory is also aural skills, the ability to hear music and immediately dictate and analyze.  It’s a skill musicians practice their entire careers, but we are becoming more and more advanced by the day.  Through sight singing, melodic dictation, and harmonic dictation, advanced analysis of music is becoming easier each class. 

WE’RE BACK... And we are so happy to be back in class, everyone was super ready and excited to get back into talking about photography. We started the first week back into critique based on the Homage assignment we gave out during break. And the students did an excellent job of interpreting homage in their own way many of the students paid homage to family/important people in their life or a subject that means the world to them.It was beautiful hearing how this homage assignment meant to them and how personal it was. They each did and try so many things, like still life photography and a combination of portrait photography to illustrate an homage.

We returned from our much needed break to continue and complete the experimental film where we explored different themes developed from emotions.  Students shared footage they all shot individually into a crowdsourced project.  We developed editing skills including motion graphics effects and titles.  Students continue to work on expressionistic, layered soundscapes.  During our screenings, students worked on their critiquing skills.  We started our screenplay project where students are taking ideas from a log line through a treatment to a finished short narrative screenplay.  We are focusing on developing character using locations and finding dramatic moments.

In October Animation & Sequential Arts decided to continue the annual artistic tradition of Inktober.  Inktober is an annual month long celebration of ink based art in October.  Each day a new Inktober artistic prompt is shared, and artists create and share illustrations based off the prompt of the day.  This year the class decided it would be fun to create their own prompts, and renamed the event: "ANIMATION & SEQUENTIAL ARTOBER."  Students created prompts of their own such as Wings, Trap, Eyes, Falling, Ice Scream, and more!  Students even had weekend prompts to complete.  Over the month all students improved greatly in their line art, shading methods, compositions, and understanding of contrast. 

The class also dove deep into learning the methods of traditional figure drawing, and capped the month off by participating in our annual Multi-Day Figure Drawing Workshop.  This workshop is a tradition three years in the making collaboratively created and executed by our teachers Alex Goldin, Matt Bozik, and Emily Steffen.  Even though the workshop was virtual this year, it still utilized live models and brought Drawing & Painting and Animation & Sequential Arts students through "Figure Drawing Boot-camp." 

October has been crammed full of information, and students are hitting it out of the park!  Appropriate for the season, we’ve been learning about what makes a song sound “spooky”.  Every student transcribed a song in a major key, and used our knowledge of our three minor scales to put the song in it’s parallel minor!  It was awesome to hear each other’s work in class.  We also did our first 4 part compositions; writing music with a Soprano, Alto, Tenor, and Bass line.  After working in groups to write our choral compositions, we made our own AUDIO RECORDING of each song, featuring the 2020 AP Music Theory Choir!  The final result was amazing! Can’t wait to try a more advanced version in November!

This month we worked on setting the table, learning about mise en place and our culinary students learned how to set themselves up for success in the kitchen. We also focused on a variety of careers in culinary arts. Just as the quarter ended, we also started delving into recipe reading... and we tested out some chocolate chip cookie making! After almost one full quarter of not cooking, we are so close, we can basically taste it! Next week, we will be combining forces with Green City Market and getting started on our showcase work!

We started the month of October by going over some theory concepts such as melody and intervals. The students really enjoyed working on the intervals part of these lectures and they even asked us if we could do extra interval practice. In the latter part of this month we really focused on practicing our parts for the recording that we are putting together. Right now, we are assembling a virtual recording of ‘Are You Gonna Be My Girl’ by Jet. This is a really fun song that the students loved to sing and play! While the students were working on learning this song, we did numerous workshops with them on how to practice, how to sing with proper technique as well as how to use recording equipment. Our project so far sounds really good! We can’t wait to share it with everyone once it’s ready!

No Update.

This month in photography has been super creatively active, when we assigned the creative self portrait assignment it gave the students an opportunity to explore to create innovative portraits as them as the subject. Yet again our students took this project in completely different ways and surprised us with the many conceptual and personal themes that they wanted to  explore. Though some students were hesitant at first and didn't know how to feel about the project, after reassurance from us to really express themselves however they want. They really took to this photo assignment and by the results that we have seen in critique, they had a lot of fun doing it. The themes that they explored Halloween (creepy/scary), displacement, and lost. So many  different topics they covered in this one assignment it was so much fun to see the rest of the class unpack their peers' work and give the feedback to continue their artistic journey.

In a virtual classroom where learning under quarantine is becoming the norm, AAP dancers have learned to study and celebrate dance as an art form by taking advantage of the world of dance around them.  Connecting the dance idioms of Spanish, Musical Theatre, Latin Jazz, Ballet and Modern has widened their perspectives and their opportunities.   
 
This month, dance students attended a master class sponsored by AMDA College and Conservatory of the Performing Arts  (NY/LA).  Nationally acclaimed performer, Chryssie Whitehead-Disbrow, created the master class for our dancers and taught them original choreography from, “A Chorus Line”, where Whitehead-Disbrow had played Cassie on Broadway.  

Right after she graduated from high school, Whitehead-Disbrow was hired as a dancer with Radio City Rockettes, in New York City.  With a career spanning over 20 years working in both Los Angeles and New York, she acted in over 13 television shows (Grey’s Anatomy, etc.) and films. Most notably she was known for a sweet romantic comedy with Raven Simone, “Revenge of the Bridesmaids”, and made Broadway debut in the revival of, “A CHORUS LINE.” Theatre roles include: Lola in DAMN YANKEES, Cassie in A CHORUS LINE, Kathy in COMPANY, and Bombalurina, in CATS.
 
Chryssie leads a creative, artistic life teaching across the globe and presently online, with her performing arts educational company, www.BroadwayArtsCommunity.com, which she co-founded with her best friend, Alexis Carra. She has directed and/or choreographed productions of CHICAGO, INTO THE WOODS, SHREK, GREASE and BEAUTY & THE BEAST. You can see her acting on the big screen next Christmas, in a small role in Steven Spielberg’s remake of, “WEST SIDE STORY!”  

The next master class was given by University of Illinois’ professor Anna Sapozhnikov. She taught students theatrical choreography from the musical, “Chicago.”  Sapozhnikov is a teacher, choreographer and performer with roots based in the Chicago.  Students asked pertinent questions about university life, hybrid learning and expectations.  

The master class assisted the dance students, who are currently working on their technique, artistry, and musicality, while celebrating their individual choreographic voices in preparation for this year’s AAP Winter Showcase.  Aside from physically demanding virtual rehearsals and learning choreography, students are keeping a positive attitude and looking forward to this year’s virtual premiere.  

This month the students are learning how to tell a story and how to get to the emotional center of the story.  Students wrote a personal story that had meaning for them and then they interviewed each other using that story as a jumping off point for that story.  They are now learning how to edit those stories using photos and other related objects to fully realize the theme and the meaning behind the stories.  Students are also learning how to improve their critiquing skills by watching clips and talking about why they are meaningful for them.

We started our Art & Activism unit by connecting our conversations about what we learned from listening to A Raisin in the Sun and life and career of Lorraine Hansberry. Each ensemble member has also chosen a monologue from A Raisin in the Sun to add to our repertoire. Check out some shots from us performing our monologues below. Since so much of our world is still very virtual, we also spent time practicing how to slate for an audition/perform our monologues “on camera.” We’re learning how to shift our visual focus and dive into our given circumstances. As we know the change of season is happening, each ensemble member also shared a song that brings them joy and explained what qualities in each song contributed to lifting our spirits. We were fortunate enough to watch the Goodman Theatre’s production of Death of Salesman by Arther Miller. UP NEXT: Animal Farm by George Orwell and Intro to Playwriting!

Spring Showcase and the end of the year are almost upon us.  The 2019 - 2020 school year is our 20th anniversary, and while it brought us some unexpected twists and turns, we are proud to say our school is going strong.  We look forward to seeing where we are in another 20 years.  Students and Staff have been hard at work this week putting the finishing touches on their Showcase Exhibits which will be completely virtual this year.  Let's check in and see what everyone worked on last week...

Students completed their short films for our Virtual Spring Showcase and the results are fantastic.  With their individual films combined, students have created a Stop Motion Short Film Collection over 20 minutes in length.  This Collection will debut in our Virtual Spring Showcase!  Students are currently working on a Zine that chronicles their personal quarantine stories, and some might even submit their Zines to Chicago Zine Fest for their upcoming youth voice readings! We are excited to see if any of their work is accepted!

No Update.

Let's just say our Dancers are "Feelin' Good!"

Mr. Alex & Mr. Matt have been collecting up a lot of work from their students, and it all looks AMAZING!  Considering all of the obstacles the students have faced, this work is a testament to the talent and hard work of our Drawing & Painting class.  We are excited to honor them.  Here's a little teaser of the latest work that will be in the show!  To see this and more, join us for our Virtual Showcase!

Our photography students worked with the photo teaching team to create and curate an original photo series. They experience photography as a way to communicate and heal.  

No Update.

It's hard to believe we are already half way through May, and that graduation looms ahead for all our Seniors at Advanced Arts.  Some of our Seniors have been taking classes at our school for multiple years, and it will be hard to imagine our halls next year without them walking within them.

Our Virtual Spring Showcase is Friday May 29th, and all our classes have been hard at work in their virtual classrooms preparing in their own ways.  While we won't be able to celebrate in our large Center Space Gallery, we will still be united digitally, in celebration.

Let's check in on what our classes were up to last week!

This class had a blast last week catching up with each other.  This classroom opens an hour earlier than any other in our school and it is often full before class with students getting a head start on work, catching up with each-other, and sharing stories about their individual days.  Utilizing virtual classrooms simply cannot substitute the shared comradely found within "The Lair," which is the students' affectionate name for their tiny but mighty classroom.  This week teachers made time for everyone to share updates on their individual lives, talk about cool recipes, share what cartoons everyone should be watching, and reminisce on silly inside classroom jokes.  Even apart, our animators have a strong community.

Students have been working on the finishing touches for their "Main Stop Motion Event" for Spring Showcase.  This project from pre-production to post has taken a little over a month, and the students used this time to prepare storyboards, plan sets, film, and edit their animations.  All Stop Motion Animation has been done within the free app, Stop Motion Studio.  The class is excited to show everyone what they have been up to in this new project!

Our Dance class spent the week choreographing a special COVID-19 Dance about dealing with the virus that will debut at our Digital Spring Showcase!

Our Drawing and Painting students are racing towards the finish line!  With the deadline for our Virtual Showcase coming up, the work is pouring in!  Though we are all a little sad that we won't have a traditional showcase with physical work this Spring, students have been working really hard and sending in some amazing art.  Their inspiration and excitement is contagious.  Check out just a few examples, but by all means, stay tuned to see all of their portfolio work at our Showcase!

Photo students produced some thoughtful work as they walked in the shoes of Alessandra Sanguinetti. Dancing between poetic, staged and documentary, Sanguinetti's photos key in on details of a gesture, a texture, the light or an environment.

No Update.