At Brooklyn Museum, our educators are rockstars—some of them, quite literally. Greem Jellyfish

At Brooklyn Museum, our educators are rockstars—some of them, quite literally. Greem Jellyfish, one of our 2014-2015 intern museum educators, toured Europe with her band DUST before landing here and continues to perform around NYC. A dancer as well as a visual artist, Greem’s approach in the galleries gets visitors up and moving with prompts that inspire movement, dance, and music-making. Greem’s favorite object to teach from, naturally, is one that was used to delight and propel audiences: a hundred-year-old dance costume from Zambia. This mask depicts a pwo, or female ancestor, and was used by its male owner to earn a living performing at festivals. For the honor of doing so, the owner would symbolically marry the spirit embodied in the pwo by paying its carver a copper ring. With its seedpods rattling and metal bells jingling, the costume doubled as a musical instrument. Maybe Greem took a page from the Likishi dancer’s book when she ended a recent presentation by banging out a rhythm on her skateboard wheels and getting all the staff to dance.In tribute to Greem’s ability to spark interaction, I rallied a few of our educators to show their response to Greem’s prompt for this fantastic artwork:  “Imagine the dancer’s next movement.” How’d they do?Posted by Sam Kelly  -- source link

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