Moving Inventors is not the run-of-the-mill tutu and recital dance class.
"It is absolutely different from your average ballet class," said Mila Parrish, an ASU assistant dance professor. "Most classes focus on the final performance, and place a lot of pressure on the dancer to perfect one dance."
Parrish has made a dream of hers come to fruition with three children's dance classes: K'Motion for ages four to six, Moving Inventors for ages 7 to 12 and On the Move for high school students. The program started on Friday, Feb. 21 and was attended by 10 children in each class.
The Moving Inventor classes are a new approach to teaching dance to children. They are designed for children to express themselves creatively through kinesthetic expressions of integrated dance themes, according to Parrish.
The classes were designed by Parrish but are taught mostly by graduate dance education student Jennifer Walker with the help of junior dance students Sara Anderson and Alison Chafin and senior dance student Maegan Enders.
Parrish, who has three dance degrees from the University of Michigan, Columbia University and Ohio State University, has been at ASU for three years. She is interested in her program becoming a year-round "laboratory" for both children and ASU dance majors.
"The way to learn is by sweating it out," Parrish said.
"Children learn best through engaging movement," she added. "In these classes, we might dance the life cycle of the frog, the circulatory system, the travel of a bee or a thunderstorm. It directly translates what the children are learning in school and helps them share and discuss ideas about these topics," Parrish said.
Walker has worked with children's dance classes in Florida and New York, and is excited to get a program started at ASU.
"My goal after graduation is to work in a program very similar to this one - to be a mentor to children and also to ASU dance students coming up through school," she said.
Parents of the children were also excited to see an unconventional environment for their children. Veronica Reed and Renato Solinas enrolled their four-year-old daughter Manuela in K'Motion with hopes that she will become less shy.
"We want her to be with other kids and learn how to socialize with them better while also learning to use her body to express herself," Reed said.
Another parent, Wendy Landis, has two children involved with the program: Dani, three, and Tannor, eight. Landis heard about the program through a friend.
"My mother is a professional dance teacher and even she was very impressed," she said. "Mila is amazing. She doesn't put their imagination in a box. This lets them be open and creative, while still being non-gender specific, unlike most dance classes out there."
Even the shiest children will become more adventurous by the end of the session, according to Parrish.
While still in its beginning stages, Parrish is hoping to expand her class in several ways as time goes by.
"We want to have a class available all year for children of all ages," she said. "We're trying to give them some global perspective about music and dance history, for example. These classes are really designed to raise the whole dancer, for the kids to become experts in dance of the whole body."
Annemarie Moody is a reporter for the Web Devil. Reach her at annemarie.moody@asu.edu.
