 I'm Kiara with Moving Minds Dance and I believe that we can learn anything through dance. Today, we are going to meet some storybook characters and try to understand their personalities and their feelings by trying them on in our bodies. At home to do this or wherever you are, all you need is your body. I have a book that we'll look at together to help us meet some characters, but you can do this with characters in books that you have wherever you are, or you can even do it with the people around you and the animals that you might know. Let's get started with a dance idea. We're going to talk about energy today. When a dancer does a movement, the way that they do it can really change what the movement means. For example, if I jump like this with my arms stretched up and my legs strung below me, you might understand she's happy or she's excited or she's really glad to be here. But if I jump like this, you might think, oh my goodness, she looks really scared or surprised or worried or concerned about something. So it makes a big difference. We are going to try on some of those energy ideas in our bodies without trying to think too much about what they might mean. And then we're going to layer on the idea of what feelings and emotions they might make us feel. So let's start with one of my favorite ways to move. Smooth. Can you say smooth and you move your body smoothly? Smooth kind of means that we don't stop moving. We keep going and we just get to wiggle kind of slowly and softly. The opposite of smooth is sharp. That's where we move fast and we stop. It feels really different, doesn't it? Did you try it with me? Good. All right. We are going to move on to a new kind of energy. This is soft. Soft can be really gentle. It can almost feel like you're not using your muscles at all. Or it can feel kind of fluid. It's like smooth, but just a little bit more gentle. A little bit less effort, like you're not trying very hard. The opposite of soft is strong. Strong is like you're pushing something away or like you're really standing up for yourself. You're using all your muscles in a really active way. It feels like you're working hard to do whatever you're doing. There's another one that feels kind of like soft called light. This is a little different because it feels like you're floating upwards. It feels like everything is flying away from the earth. Like there's no gravity at all. And the opposite of light is heavy, where it feels like everything just weighs too much to be able to move it. Now there's two more. Shaky. Can you shake with me? And swingy, which is when we let our arms and our legs swing from side to side or forward and backward or even up and down. How do those things make you feel? Let's try to add that on. When I do smooth, I feel calm. I don't know about you, but that makes me feel relaxed. Sharp can feel kind of angry or it can feel brave or it can feel any number of different things. Soft might feel bored or it might feel kind of sleepy or it might feel it could also feel gentle and kind. Strong, I think of as being really brave. So I'm really using my muscles even if something is hard to get through. Strong makes me feel like I can do anything. Light, I think of as being really happy. It might feel different to you, but it makes me feel joyful whereas heavy feels really sad. Shaky can be a couple of different things. You might shake if you're scared or you might shake if you're excited. There are so many different ways that can come across and so many ways that can feel for you. And then swingy, for me that feels silly. It can also feel kind of carefree and again kind of joyful, but it might also be goofy. All right, let's look at some characters in a book. We're going to use all of those kinds of energy to see if we can understand the characters we meet in Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. On this page, we meet two characters. We meet Max, the main character of the story, and his dog. You might see two different kinds of energy on this page. When I look at Max, I see strong energy and I see sharp energy. When I look at the dog, I might see shaky energy or soft energy. They're very different. Max looks kind of mischievous to me in this picture. So his strong and sharp energy looks like he's maybe playing a trick or causing mischief, which is what it says in the story. The dog to me looks scared. I can see him running away. Let's look at some of the wild things. On the first page, the wild things look a lot like Max did in that last page. They're using sharp energy to try to be scary or maybe chase him away. They also kind of look happy. Maybe they're just saying hi, but they have sharp energy in their personality and it can look like more than one different thing. What about on this page? This is more like what the dog was doing. Kind of shaky, maybe smooth, maybe soft. Maybe when I look at them, I see that they might be kind of surprised, sudden, or maybe scared and hiding. On this page, I see smooth energy. I see them being a little bit more calm and relaxed. That bow looks very regal, which means they're being very proper and formal. That looks like a different energy. Can we try that on in our bodies so we can have smooth, proud, maybe brave or happy and calm on this page? Let's try that in our bodies. That feels excited and happy to me. Let's try that one more time. Good. All right. In this page, they look like they're using strong muscles to hold them up, but they also look relaxed. Maybe they're swinging their legs smoothly or maybe they're feeling a little silly up in those trees. All right, we're not going to read every page of the story. We're going to skip ahead to this one and this will be the last one we look at. On this page, I see heavy energy. I see them showing maybe soft, heavy energy to show that they are so sleepy. Can you do that too? Oh, sleepy energy. Good. It's very different than that light jump that we tried together. All right, we're going to play a dance game now called mirroring. When we mirror, one of us is going to be the leader and do movement kind of slowly so the other person can copy. This time it's going to be me because I can't see you, but you can see me. When we do this game, you can do this again a little bit later with anyone who's around you and you can switch who's the leader. But for now, I want you to look at what I'm doing and I want you to copy what I'm doing at the same time that I'm doing it. While we move together, I want you to see if you can feel the same feeling that I have in my body. So let's just start and see how it goes. I'm going to start really big and reach up and I want you to copy that shape too. I feel joyful when I do this shape. I hope it makes you feel joyful too. Now we're going to start moving slowly together and I want you to see if you're feeling changes as my movement changes. What does this shape feel like? Is it still joyful? Or does it feel sad? What about this shape? Does it feel scared? What about this shape? Does it feel brave? What about this shape? Does it feel strong and angry? What about this shape? Does it feel curious? What about this shape? Does it feel heavy and tired? What about this shape? Does it feel excited? What about this shape? Does it feel calm? All right, that was our mirroring exercise. You can do that with anyone else. I want you to try being the leader, find a partner, and try taking turns, but you can do that after we play one more game together. I have this magic hat full of dance movements. I'm gonna choose a movement from a hat and then I'm going to pick a character card from my pile and I want us to try to do the movement, the way that the character is feeling. Are you ready to find out what they are? Our first one is jumping like this wild thing. His name is Bernard. He is really so exhausted and sleepy. Can we try an exhausted jump? Let's try another one. Oh, good. That feels kind of fun, doesn't it? Let's try another one. We are going to stretch like this excited wild thing, that really light and happy jump that he's showing. Let's stretch our muscles in that way. You can stretch out away from you or you can stretch down or you can stretch your leg up high. Does that have that same big excited feeling? Good job. Okay, some more. We're going to wiggle and we're going to wiggle like these frightened wild things. Let's try that. Can we look closely at the shapes that they're making and do that shape when we wiggle? I'm seeing that this wild thing has one hand on his belly and one hand on his head and he's sitting and bending his legs and we can shake like them. All right, let's do one more. We are going to gallop and this is the picture that I picked. There are two characters, which means that you get to choose. You can be strong and mischievous max or you could be frightened dog. Which one do you choose? I'm going to choose and it's going to be a secret you might have to guess. All right, ready? Let's gallop like one of those characters. Set, go. Gallop is like you're chasing one foot with the other foot. So we can maybe even have a scared foot and a mischievous foot. That's tricky to do two things in our body at the same time. All right, that's all for today. You can keep playing with these ideas. You can keep playing these games and looking at characters and trying on what they feel in your body. While you do that, I want you to think about how copying or mirroring someone's movements and someone's feelings can help you understand where they're coming from or what they're feeling. That's one of the most important things that we can do is understand other people and why they're feeling the way they are. I hope that you have fun playing with those ideas wherever you are and whatever you do. And I hope that we'll get to dance together again soon.