Celebrating Brooklyn

Celebrate Brooklyn, the annual festival of music, dance, performance and film produced by BRIC Performing Arts is brighter than a thousand suns, and just as hot.

This weekend's events are presented in partnership with the Museum for African Art, which offers free Educator Resources  and other Public Programs of interest to teaching artists, when we are not busy dancing.

Information on this weekend's concert is below:

African Festival with Konono No. 1

Saturday, July 17, 2:00pm
Gates open at 1:00pm

with Omar Pene & Super Diamono, Chiwoniso, Meta & the Cornerstones and Djarara
Presented with the Museum for African Art
Our annual celebration of African music, food and culture builds to an ecstatic crescendo with the distortion-fueled trance music of Congolese thumb-piano wizards Konono No. 1. Dakar heavyweights Omar Pene & Super Diamono, seminal figures in the birth of the modern Senegalese sound, add a jolt of energy to the proceedings, while the distinctive voice of Zimbabwean Afro-soul diva Chiwoniso, the pan-African reggae of Meta & The Cornerstones, and the festival horns and drums from Haiti’s Djarara bring other unique flavors to the day.

Love Brooklyn

The Brooklyn Museum's behind-the-scenes blog has some fascinating posts on things that never crossed your mind.

In this one, I learned that archivists use the power of the sun to bleach works on paper:

It may look like fun-in-the-sun, or an excuse just to work outside, but light-bleaching is in fact, a treatment technique that is employed often by paper conservators and has been a standardized procedure used in the profession of conservation for at least 30 years.The technique utilizes exposure to light from the sun or from an artificial light source such as fluorescent lamps to reduce discoloration in paper while it is submerged in a bath of purified and buffered water.

Conference

The Brooklyn Arts Council lists an upcoming conference in Brooklyn.

Culturals of Color Symposium Connecting and Serving Community Arts Leadership

This day-long conference for arts and cultural organizations that represent and serve New York City's communities of color addresses current challenges in the nonprofit arts sector by providing an opportunity for African, American Indian, Asian, and Latino/Hispanic diasporic organizations to learn from top arts administrators, share best practices, and network.

Friday, April 17th, 2009
Skylight Gallery
1368 Fulton Street, 3rd Floor
Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn
9am – 5pm

Please RSVP for this seminar.

$25 when purchased online; $30 on-site

Call 718-625-0080 with questions about RSVPs and payment.

Dance Fever

Partners for Arts Education is funding the Dancewave Learning to Teach Series and it looks like a terrific professional development opportunity for Teaching Artists.

Textured Journeys: Crafting Creative Movement Lessons for Very Young Artists, a 3-part seminar led by dance educator Barbara Bashaw, is designed to help individuals learn how to craft Creative Movement lessons for 3-9 year-olds.

The seminar runs on April 19, April 26th and May 3rd from 10:00 AM to 1:30 PM. It costs $125, so you may have to roll some change or, better yet, ask your employer if they'll chip in.

I know it's the depression, but I still think employers should be looking for ways to help their teaching artists afford the cost of workshops like these.

Professional Development may be expensive, but bad teaching is forever.

For more information, call Dancewave at (718) 522-4696.