About

This interactive introduces six young artists visiting the U.S. through the Cultural Visitors Program (developed in partnership with Kennedy Center Education Department and the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs). Two dancers, an actor, and two musicians have opportunities as members of visiting groups to work with, learn from, and perform for artists and others in the United States. Their stories are told in written journals, sound and video clips, photos, and articles.

Think About...

Comprehension

• Kwikstep shares history and philosophy of hip-hop dance with the visitors from the Flying Legs Crew. Summarize his explanation.
• Ballet Hispanico suggests that there will be classic hip hop in the future, when hip hop is as old as ballet. What does this mean?
• In the course of the visits, there are many conversations about differences between art in the visitors’ home country and in the U.S. Which of these differences were most interesting to you?
• Several conversations (video and written) refer to problems in meeting with or learning from other artists. What kinds of obstacles are mentioned?

Critical Thinking

• Danny “Dan One” Polonco describes his graffiti as “Alphabetical engineering.” “It is not necessarily the best medium, but it’s the one we happened to master.” He says he’s an unacknowledged artist. What are the rules about graffiti at your school or in your town? Do you think it’s art?
• There are several master classes on the visiting artists’ itineraries. What master class would you like to set up for yourself?
• Some of the visiting artists study and perform styles of music or dance which are distinctively American, such as jazz or hip-hop. Meanwhile, we in the U.S. study and perform vareites of music or dance which originated elsewhere, How does this kind of cultural exchange enrich cultures?

Reflection

• Where did you see efforts at communication being made? How did the different groups communicate?
• What would you like best about an opportunity of this kind?
• Modern dancer Erdem Gunduz choreographed a dance through the streets of Istanbul. Think of how you could choreograph a dance in your town, and map the dance.
• What kinds of opportunities are opened up by visiting another country? What kinds of special learning can take place?

Quiz Yourself!

• What musical instruments were played in this interactive? Which instrument families were represented?
• A wide variety of venues, from a church to a school, turned up on the visiting artists’ itineraries. Name all that you can find.
• Which countries were represented?

Learn More

Dig Deeper!

Visit an interactive map of hip-hop in the Bronx
http://turbulence.org/Works/bronx_rhymes/map.html?id=2

Use the Multicultural Jukebox sections of the interactive as starting points for your own choreography – or just dance to the music for fun.

For the Educator

Overview

The Culture Connect interactive is arranged like a stack of pages from a visitor’s scrapbook. Each of the six profiles of young artists from another culture offers multiple items to explore, including written journal pages, news articles, videos, and photo slideshows.

Instructional Strategies

This interactive is probably most suited to free exploration, but it can be enjoyed with an interactive white board or computer with projector.

If possible, put students into small groups with a computer and give them one of the following tasks to focus their exploration:

• You follow the visitors through a variety of meetings, classes, performances, and events. Imagine that you’ve been asked to cut down on these visits because of a change in schedule. Decide which events should be considered highest priority and kept. Be prepared to defend your choices.
• Imagine that you are using the itineraries of these visitors as an example to help you plan a similar visit for a foreign artist coming to your town. Work out an exciting visit for the artist, based on research into your own town’s artistic community.

Once students have explored the resource thoroughly, you might want to join as a group to watch, read, listen to, and discuss some specific elements.

Then have each student create a profile page for himself or herself, in the style of the profiles in the interactive.