Each day we begin by moving through 8 fundamental patterns of movement using Anne Green Gilbert’s BrainDance Warmup. We explore Breath, tactile sensations, core-distal movement, body halves, head-tail, body sides, cross-lateral movement, and vestibular movement. This integrates areas of the brain and unifies cognitive and physical systems of learning.

Each week, we have a “Big Idea.” This week's concept was “Levels.” Can you be as still as the floor as you make high, medium, and low shapes with your body? Interwoven in this concept is the idea of control, stillness, and focus. It is a good feeling to control our bodies and think of many ways to make shapes.

Here we play a game called “Sculptor and Clay” where children explore shapes and stillness in pairs. We learn how to move our partner’s body with care, using gentle touch and slow movements.

Lines lines and more lines. Can we curve? Can we make straight lines? Can we make curved lines and straight lines in one shape? Can you find the straight lines and curved lines in the shapes these dancers are making?

In this game of musical hoops, children practice their locomotor movements. They hop, skip, and gallop around the hoop until the music stops. They invite friends who do not land in a hoop to come and join them inside. This dance unlocks topics such as empathy, sharing, and how to invite a friend into a playgroup.

Here, we kinesthetically explore many different ways to make 6-pointed snowflake shapes. Dancers play with the idea of “size” making a snowmen with three different sized snowballs, and melt and freeze their bodies, exploring water's various properties.  

Children 2-5 explore literature as they make a dance story with Karen Beaumont's wonderfully naughty book I Ain't Gonna Paint No More!. We “scarf-painted” our bodies part by part along with the story, and continued the mischief by painting the whole room.  We explored beginning, middle, and end, and embodied the story's characters and feeling traits.

Preschoolers share a collaborative movement class with seniors at Jackson’s Senior Center. We warm-up in pairs, and play lots of stimulating movement games together. It’s an honor to witness the sharing of life’s simple joys together with these two generations.

Galliope works with K-6 ages too! Here boys ages 8-11 dance about relationships.  This exploration unlocks explorations of personal choice, diversity, and respect. 

Dance makes art and art makes dance. In this workshop with the Art Association in Jackson, we find connections between art forms; see where they collide, and when they become one. We study the dynamic New York Abstract Expressionists, and contemporary artists like Heather Hansen. In this camp we get into our materials, smearing charcoal and throwing paint as we dip our minds and bodies into the world where visual art and dance intersect.

In 2022, Karen took two trips to Warsaw, Poland, to work with refugees at the Modalinska Humanitarian Aid Center. The first-grade class at Munger Mountain Elementary School sent her off with handmade cards to share with the children. Her days were spent exploring creative movement with young children, and she taught adult Latin dance classes in the evenings. She returned six months later with her husband, Jeff Hogan, and son, Finn Hogan, and they led a filmmaking skills course with the teens at Modalinska.