Author: Pamela Sofras, Professor Emirita, UNC Charlotte; Contributing Writer: Cathy Wright, AIEA Dance Institute Director Pamela Anderson Sofras, Med. is a Professor Emeritus of dance and dance education and was the first Chair of the Dance Department in the College of Arts and Architecture at the University of North Carolina Charlotte.  She has 40 years of experience teaching dance at the university level   and has taught and developed courses in modern dance technique, composition, dance education methods and student teaching. From 1978 to 1990, she was affiliated with the American Dance festival as a faculty member. She served as assistant, associate dean and founding director of the Young Dancer’s School of the American Dance Festival. She was part of a team of educators who wrote dance education guidelines for training K-12 dance teachers for the public schools of North Carolina.  She has also developed curriculum materials supported by state and national grants, for professional arts organizations located in New Jersey, North Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama and New York. Sofras has been… Read More »EMOTION AND ENERGY

LIST OF ARTISTS WITH CURRICULAR CONNECTIONS provided by Durinda Cheek, AIEA Visual Arts Director Alabama Artists Kelly Fitzpatrick Charlie Lucas Bill Traylor Gees Bend Quilters African American Artists/History Romare Bearden William Johnson Jacob Lawrence Faith Ringgold Ecology/ Life Cycles Claude Monet Environmental Science/Recycle Dale Chihuly Engineering Leonardo da Vinci Alexander Calder Math Chuck Close – Grids M. C. Escher – Tessellations Paul Klee – Shapes Piet Mondrian – Geometry We have Lessons developed for each of these Artists and Curricular Connections. If you are interested in accessing any of those lessons, please contact us for more information. rfoster@asf.net. This project has been made possible by a grant from the Alabama State Council on the Arts, South Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Mickey Lonsdale, is an international award-winning physical theatre actor and dancer. He originally hails from Ramer, Alabama. He began his dance training at Alabama Dance Theatre in Montgomery and has a B.A. in Communication/Theatre at Auburn Montgomery. While in college, he became the emcee, entertaining 7000 fans nightly, for the Montgomery Biscuits. After graduating, Mickey moved to Italy to pursue an M.F.A. in Physical Theatre at the Accademia del’Arte. He received training in Commedia Dell’Arte, Clown, Dance, Choreography, and Acting.  During this time, he attended Flic Scoula di Circo, Circus School, where he trained in acrobatics, acro dance, Chinese pole, walking globe, and various other circus skills. While in Europe, he performed with companies such as Familie Floz in Germany, Divaldo Continuo in the Czech Republic, and Red Dot Theatre in Italy and Turkey. After receiving his M.F.A., Mickey moved to the NYC area where has starred in several independent films, commercials, TV shows, and works as a free-lance dancer/choreographer. He became a founding member of Aura Curiatlas Physical Theatre.… Read More »ONLINE LEARNING LESSON with Mickey Lonsdale

Angela Allen Dickson Angie is the current theatre instructor at Alabama Christian Academy in Montgomery, Alabama. She has taught theatre and directed students of every age for over thirty years. She has her MFA from the University of Alabama in Theatre Performance, is a member of the Dramatist Guild, a certified Meisner Acting instructor for The True Acting Institute, and is an Equity Eligible Candidate. She was recently featured in the Cloverdale Playhouse productions of Dancing at Lughnasa and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead and as Baroness Elberfeld in the Alabama Shakespeare Festival’s production of The Sound of Music. She has been involved in many theatrical productions and is looking forward to the time we can all gather together again for live performances. She is also a produced playwright having participated in the ASCAP Musical Theatre Workshop with such musical Theatre dignitaries as Stephen Schwartz and Sheldon Harnick. She has also had the good fortune to perform with Randy Foster in the Cloverdale Playhouse Cabarets and teach at Camp Shakespeare… Read More »ONLINE PROFESSIONAL LEARNING LESSON with Angie Dickson

Middle School Socials Studies and Arts: 3 Lessons VIDEOS https://vimeo.com/channels/1622454 LESSONS 1) CULTURAL DEVELOPMENT IN THE US 1900-1930s Cultural-Development-in-the-US-AIEA-Lesson Plan Cultural-Development-Appendix 2) SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CHANGES IN US SINCE WWII Social-and-Cultural-Changes-in-the-US-AIEA-Lesson Plan Social and Cultural-Changes-Appendix 3) WHERE’S THE POWER? GOVERNMENTAL SYSTEMS Governmental-Systems-AIEA-Lesson Plan Governmental-Systems-Appendix This project has been made possible by a grant from the Alabama State Council on the Arts, South Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Cathy Wright, retired – Montgomery Public Schools Office of Curriculum and Instruction, serves as a teaching artist and comprehensive arts education facilitator for the Alabama Institute for Education in the Arts (AIEA). She developed and implemented the program in Dance for the very first magnet school in Montgomery (CCPAC – now housed at Booker T. Washington Magnet High School), and she led Montgomery Public School’s K-12 Arts Integration Initiative prior to her retirement. She also founded AIEA’s Dance Institute. She is the 1992 American Teacher Awards Performing Arts Honoree/Dance, a 1995 National Endowment for the Arts Artist-in-Education Fellowship recipient, and she served on two Alabama Course of Study/Arts Education committees for the Alabama State Department of Education. She co-authored (with Randy Foster) the Alabama State Department of Education’s ACCESS Distance Learning Arts Survey course online, and she currently serves as an arts facilitator/evaluator for AIEA’s ACES (Arts Connections Enhance Student Success) program at Vaughn Road Elementary School in Montgomery. A native of Montgomery, AL, Liza Cardinal Simpler trained at the… Read More »ONLINE PROFESSIONAL LEARNING LESSON Cathy Hess Wright and Liza Cardinal Simpler