Pones: Laboratory of Movement

Ladies Respect and Hip Hop

Curriculum: Dance, Social and Cultural Connections

We use hip hop as a tool to discuss and discover how empowerment and respect are valuable parts of being a young woman. How do these ideas go together? Hip hop is all about respect and we will focus on celebrating womanhood, each other, and lifting each other up versus tearing others down.

Example: Each week we will work with a different theme/topic. Theme = BUILDING UP OTHERS. Talk about supporting one another and how you could do that. Imagine you are mentoring someone younger than you, do you have any life advice for young girls today in their future pursuits. Play the Paper on the Back Exercise. The girls each tape a piece of paper on their backs and others write compliments on them. Once they are finished they have a list of compliments about themselves. Stress how important it is to make the compliment personal (not “you’re cool”) and also no negativity or even jokingly disrespectful writings. Start to build a dance about these compliments, talk about the idea of a ‘build’ or group pose in dance and brainstorm some poses that they could build upon as a group for the middle of the dance.

Recommended Ages: Grades 4-12

Maximum Audience: 30

Length: 60 minutes

Cost: $85 per workshop

Max #Sessions per Day: 3​