By Shana SagerThe Daily Northwestern
When Northwestern Dance Prof. Billy Siegenfeld asked for nine children to join his dancers on stage Saturday morning, nearly 40 ran up to act out the seasons. Parents and audience members blew “cool winter wind” from their seats, as the kids on stage shivered and stood by an imaginary fire to get warm.
Chicago’s Jump Rhythm Jazz Project, Siegenfeld’s company, entertained nearly 480 men, women and children with their syncopated dance moves at Pick-Staiger Concert Hall.
NU’s School of Music presented the performance, “Music in Motion,” as part of the 11th season of its Kids Fare series. The program presents about seven concerts each year for families with children ages 4 to 8.
Siegenfeld, artistic director of Jump Rhythm Jazz Project, showed the kids the basics of rhythm by asking them to be the “orchestra.” By clapping their hands and tapping their feet, the dancers taught the kids how to move to a beat.
“You are going to be our music,” Siegenfeld told them. “And if you mess it up, we call that doing a solo.”
The Jump Rhythm Jazz Project has performed with the Kids Fare series before because the company wants to educate and entertain children with rhythm.
“Rhythm is a language that kids know because they haven’t fettered themselves, they haven’t confined themselves yet,” Siegenfeld said in an interview. “We want to show them how their language could be used to construct another language, one of choreography and theater.”
The Kids Fare concerts are attended by families from all over the North Shore. NU alumna Katie Leander and her two-and-a-half year old son, Owen, came from Riverside for their first performance this weekend.
“It’s nice to be able to take your kids to an event like this and to be able to expose them to the arts,” Leander said. “It’s an environment where if they get up and make noise it’s okay.”
Leander said she would bring her son to more of the concerts because Owen said he liked everything in the show.
For some families, the Kids Fare series is a regular activity on Saturday mornings. Evanston resident Ellen Markus said she brings her children, Grace and Elliot, to as many of the shows as she can.
“It’s fun for the whole family,” Markus said. “I think I like it as much, if not more, than they do.”
Richard Van Kleeck, director of concert activities at NU, said the series includes shows about movement, vocals and instrumentals. The School of Music offers the events to expose kids to different kinds of music by getting them to dance and sing with the performers.
“The main thing is to make it fun, and in the process we know that some students are going to be affected very strongly by this,” Van Kleeck said. “The whole goal is to make it fun and educational at the same time.”
Reach Shana Sager at [email protected].
