Friday, January 9, 2015

Fall at Chicago Opera Theater's Opera for All

Heather Keith - COT Assistant Teaching Artist

The winter showcase was a great success this year! I am the assistant teaching artist at both Chase Elementary and Reilly Elementary this year and I feel like all the students at both my schools showed great pride in their accomplishments.

For this year’s showcase we decided to share a potion of the scripts and lyrics the kids have been working so hard on this semester. We also learned part of a song written by COT teaching artist Justin Callas entitled “ A Terrific Tale”. I was so impressed to see how quickly the students picked up on the melody and the song. Their natural musical instincts are extremely impressive. 

Along with showing the students written and musical accomplishments, we included their dinosaur drawings in the showcase. At Chase we featured students in the program and at Reilly we had a slideshow displaying several student pictures. The goal of this is to share with our audience all the different art forms that go into creating an opera.

We ended the showcase with the children dancing to “Oye Como Va” and I think this was something they were all really proud of. I remember while teaching the students the dance, many were unsure of their abilities and nervous they would forget the choreography. Many students practice outside of class time and helped each other learn some of the trickier parts. The extra work paid off, because by the time the music was on the students were all smiles!

Both schools had a great turn out and it was nice to see the parents of the student’s get just as excited as we are for the final spring performance.

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