— NOTE: This website serves as archival record only. Luminarium completed its final season in 2024. —
DANCE+ Series
Celebrating the intersection of dance and other fields
DANCE+ Series
Luminarium’s debut DANCE+ Series offered local residents an engaging, family-friendly class each Saturday in April 2014 at the Armory in Somerville, exploring weekly themes of dance intersecting other fields: Technology, Science, Music, and Light. Free and open to ages 3-12, these classes were extremely well-received, and were presented by Luminarium Dance Company and the Center for Arts at the Armory. Since then, the company expanded this program, bringing it to organizations in Hyde Park, Newton, Acton, and Amherst. On several occasions, Luminarium was asked to develop a new class pertaining to the organization's lesson plan: DANCE+Bugs (commissioned by the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art) and DANCE+Technology for Visually Impaired Children (commissioned by the Discovery Museums) are two examples.
Many thanks for making your special DANCE+ program available to my children this past spring. Neither had ever taken a dance class, and after the first session they both asked to return for more. We appreciated the low-key, welcoming atmosphere which so nicely set the tone for the children to feel free to experiment with dance (and art, and music, and science…) in their own way. I especially enjoyed seeing children of a range of ages, backgrounds and abilities having fun and learning together, and attribute this to the encouraging and inclusive attitude of the leaders. We are so pleased that you were able to offer this opportunity for healthy learning to our children . . . Our family hopes that you will be able to continue to offer this sort of creative programming in the future as a benefit to the community.
Margaret Warren
Mother of 2014 DANCE+ Particants Benjamin (6) and Abigail (3)
DANCE+Technology
A clip from our DANCE+Technology class with Ed Bokhour, commissioned by the Discovery Museums in Acton, MA.
DANCE+Music
A clip from our third DANCE+ class: DANCE+Music with Jenn Allen and Christos Zevos.
DANCE+Science
A short clip from our class with Rose Abramoff: DANCE+Science.
DANCE+Light
A glimpse at our final class of the run! DANCE+Light with Luminarium Artistic Directors Merli V. Guerra and Kimberleigh A. Holman.
DANCE+ Series in Somerville, 2014:
A group shot of (most) of our lovely participants from April 5, with Ed Bokhour, and company members Jess J, Jess C and Jennifer.
Great ideas in getting across the floor. Lots of animal impressions happened on Saturday! Water bears to owls; sloths to frogs.
One of our youngest participants interacting with Ed's motion-sensor sound equipment.
Christos's guitar was a big hit.
Our youngest participant takes a leap across the "piano" drawn on the floor, accompanied by live music.
Our participants were so smart with the scales, intervals and chords, we decided to make it trickier, working together to play a song with our bodies!
Deep in thought as Rose explains the science theories the class is about to reenact through dance.
After locking down the idea of the water cycle we moved on to volcanoes, which were very popular. In this photo, a group of formerly-lava dancers starts to form an island.
Rose teaches her students about being a good audience as each group takes turns showing their own scientifically-based choreography to the class.
Rose had the challenge of catching her speedy group in light.
Merli teaches her group about blending into projected images by wearing lighter colors, and demonstrates how the image grows larger in size the farther she walks away from the projector.
Kim's group uses an overhead projector to create shadow duets of varying sizes.