The Net can show the right steps

Editor’s note: Pauline Sameshima is a Washington State University assistant professor, education researcher, writer, choreographer and artist.

One of the courses I teach at WSU in the College of Education is Arts Integration. The course focuses on how dance, drama, music, and visual art can be integrated together, and in the elementary classroom to enrich learning experiences. This course largely seeks to help student teachers find sources of inspiration and better understand themselves as creative beings. The column here describes the cyber-path of designing the beginnings of a dance to a song called “Stricken.”

I usually begin with music. Lately, I find myself at the WSU Electronic Music Association at http://ema.wsu.edu. I’m there because my summer course is choreographing five dances from pieces on that site. I’m inspired by the energy and vitality there, and a palpable sense of emergence – myriad and surfacing are words that come to mind.

While at EMA, I connect a link to a hilarious dance video called “Stamp” at www.youtube.com/ watch?v=uPO3Q-bkbdo. Cele, an electronic musician, has posted the instructional link. I think about her work, imagining that her song “Stricken” (at http://ema.wsu.edu/?q=node/47) would look quite interesting with some kind of Irish dance fusion.

So I search Irish Dancing on YouTube. While replaying “Stricken,” repeatedly, I hear or sense horses in the song – the stomp of their hooves and the images of herds galloping across the planes. So I Google “horse+art” and “how to draw horses.” Here’s where that takes me:

“http://drawsketch.about.com/ library/bl_step_horse1.htm;

“http://drawsketch.about.com/od/ learntodrawhorses/Learn_to_ Draw_Horses.htm

“http://elfwood.lysator.liu.se/ farp/horses

“http://abc.net.au/rollercoaster/ saddle/interact/draw and

“ www.janbrett.com/video /how_to_draw_horses.htm.

I know my students could draw horses with charcoal on paper and then use the images to create fabric-painted horses on costumes they are going to sew.

I think about traditional clothing of various cultures. My intention is to help make integration connections for my students – connections between the arts and other subject areas.

I remember that I’ve seen some Japanese kimono jackets with intricate artistic embellishments. So I look up “Japanese happi coat” and find results at www.goodsfromjapan.com/ product/product-list.php?cID=129 &cName=Happi%20Coats&pID=0&p Name=Product-list and find a link to the history of the Haori coat.

The Haori coat was once elaborately decorated on the inside when the middle class did not want to flaunt their wealth. Later, the jacket became reversible. My class has now sewn Haori coats, will draw horses with fabric paints on the back, and will perform an Irish dance fusion to Cele’s “Stricken” song.

That is how “Stricken” evolved.

Come see the results. EMA and the Arts Integration student teachers will present Summer Arts Celebration at 7 p.m. on June 14 at Kimbrough Hall, Room 101 at the WSU campus in Pullman. All are welcome.