LE Performance Guide
Walton Arts Center
Lower Elementary | Performance Guide
The Painted Garden
Photo credit: TPO
The Painted Garden (Il Giardino Dipinto) is a garden created by the painter
Rebwar Saeed, where the colors of his homeland, the Kurdish natural
landscape, and the geometric design harmonies of the Islamic garden
merge and play with each other. The painter invites the audience to follow
an imaginary path through four gates, each of them leading to an area
dedicated to a different color and element: the yellow garden (earth), the
blue garden (water), the green garden (leaves), the red garden (love). On
their journey the audience interacts with colors, matter, shapes and space
and the beauty of Rebwar’s imaginary gardens. Through use of sensors
and motion capture technologies, two dancers lead the audience to
interact with breathtaking scenery and visual effects.
Ideas for Curriculum Connections
Arkansas Learning Standards: SL.K.1, SL.1.1,
SL.2.1, SL.3.1; SL.K.5, SL.1.5, SL.2.5, SL.3.5. Fine
Arts Standards Theatre: P.5.K.1, P.5.1.1, P.5.2.1,
P.5.3.1; P.6.K.1, P.6.1.1, P.6.2.1, P.6.3.1; R.8.1.1,
R.8.2.1, R.8.3.1; R.9.K.1, R.9.1.1, R.9.2.1, R.9.3.1;
R.9.2.3, R.9.3.3; CN.10.K.1, CN.10.1.1, CN.10.2.1,
CN.10.3.1. Fine Arts Standards Dance: R.1.DAP.1,
R.1.DAP.2, R.1.DAP.3; R.2.DAP.1; CN.5.DAP.1;
CN.5.DAP.3; CN.5.DAP.5
Photo Credit: TPO
The Show
The Painted Garden is a multimedia performance where
children will be spontaneously invited onto the stage to
interact with light and sound sensors. The sensors respond to
movement and sounds, creating an interactive work of art,
allowing children to participate in the creative process.
Stage space is the true protagonist. Thanks to the use of the
sensors and digital technologies, every production is
transformed into an environment where the audience can have
a playful experience with the arts.
Italian children’s theater company Compagnia TPO is known for
their visual, emotional and immersive theater that crosses the
border between art and play. Forming an active relationship
with their environment, children develop an artistic experience
that goes beyond language and culture. This tactile
relationship with images and sounds allows for the division
between art and play to be deconstructed and further
explored as a single entity.
The Garden
Inspired by the memories of his childhood in Kurdistan, painter
Rebwar Saeed merges the colors of the Kurdish landscape with
the geometric harmonies of Islamic gardens in his art work. It
was these works that inspired Compagnia TPO to create a show
where children can experience Saeed’s world through dancing
and playful movement.
The Painted Garden/ Performance Guide
The Painted Garden is a story about the creation of a wonderful
imaginary garden. It offers children a visual, emotional, and
immersive theater experience where they actively explore the
elements of art as well as the beauty of Saeed’s imaginary
gardens. The audience experiences a digitally created world of
astonishing sounds and images, where every movement made
alters the visual display of the gardens bursting into life.
The audience takes a journey through four gates leading to a
yellow garden, a blue garden, a green garden and a red garden.
Each garden has a unique theme for the audience to explore,
earth, water, leaves and love. Projected images of stones,
flowers, water and animals that can be moved and manipulated
bring these gardens to life.
The Sensors
The stage is composed of a white dance carpet, a video
projector that sends animated images from above and a
system of sensors hidden under the carpet. Virtual landscapes
are created on this motion and sound sensitive carpet by
the dancers and children from the audience whom they
lead to interact with the technology and with each other
through movement “games”. This interactive stage space
allows participants to create music, activate images and other
complex events through movements and pressure over the
sensors. The interactive “magic carpet” was devised by TPO in
collaboration with computer engineer Martin Von Gunten.
Learning Activities
Notice Movement
Tableau
Prepare to see movement by thinking about
Space – Direction, pathway and destination in
Tableau (tab-BLO) is short for the French,
B. E. S. T.: Body, Energy, Space and Time. These
space. Levels, like low, medium and high are
tableau vivant (tab-BLO vi-VAHNT) which
elements of movement are useful to help
important for still bodies in space. Focus of the
means “living picture.” A tableau is a
plan what to look for and guide reflection and
performer (where the artist looks in space) is
representation of a dramatic scene by a person
discussion after a performance.
important.
or group, posing silently without moving.
Body – Parts of the body, like head, arms, hands,
Time – Speed and duration of movement, and
Combination tableaus can show a beginning
hips, legs and feet are used to create shapes
also rhythm, accents and use of movement
tableau (frozen picture) followed by a short
and perform actions like stretching, bending,
patterns.
movement followed by a final tableau. Create
walking or leaping.
frozen pictures of: a school of fish, waves,
leaves on a tree, wind, flowers and marvelous
Energy – The way the body moves with force,
creatures.
weight, strength or flow.
Photo Credit: TPO
Four Movements Tableau
The Painted Garden is a garden created by a painter! It is inspired
by four colors: yellow, blue, green, red, which represent earth,
water, leaves and love.
Divide the class into four groups and assign each group
one of the four colors that represent a movement from the
performance. Each group should create two tableaus (a
beginning picture and an ending picture) that expresses
something about their assigned part. In addition, the group
should devise a moving transition between their beginning and
ending tableaus. The transition can be performed to five counts.
For example, the green movement, which represents leaves,
might be expressed as follows: Students begin with a tableau of
leaves on a tree. The moving transition is of five count duration
and shows wind blowing through the tree. The students use
their wind motion to move into a final tableau that shows the
leaves fluttering to the ground.
[email protected] / www.waltonartscenter.org
Volume 14 Number 18
Colgate Classroom Series performances
help students meet Arkansas Learning
Photo credit: TPO
Reflect and Assess
Ask the following questions. Record the group’s answers on the board and discuss.
Standards
Learn more at:
www.waltonartscenter.org
• What did you notice about The Painted Garden?
• Describe the dancers. Who were they? What were they doing? Why?
• What was different about this performance and other performances?
Walton Arts Center
• What did you like most about the live performance?
Learning & Engagement
Laura Goodwin, Vice President
Dances? Costumes? Set? Props? Music?
• Would you have performed the story differently? How?
Dr. Patricia Relph, Arts Learning Specialist
• How did the music help tell the story?
Mallory Barker, School Services Specialist
• How did the performance make you feel?
Meghan Foehl, Engagement Coordinator
• What moment in the play do you remember most?
Sallie Zazal, Learning Coordinator
Lanie DeJarnatte, Intern
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Learn More Online
Walton Arts Center
TPO
Learning & Engagement
www.tpo.it/
The Painted Garden
www.vimeo.com/134211442
Kurdistan
www.everyculture.com/wc/Tajikistan-to-Zimbabwe/Kurds.html
Walton Arts Center 2016/17 Learning programming is generously supported
by these funders, sponsors and benefactors:
Education Sponsors:
Colgate-Palmolive
JB Hunt Transport Services, Inc.
Octagon
Prairie Grove Telephone Co.
Tyson Foods, Inc.
Unilever
Education Partners:
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art
Northwest Arkansas Education Service Cooperative
UA Center for Children & Youth
Education Grantors:
Arkansas Arts Council
Bank of America
Baum Charitable Foundation
The John F. Kennedy Center
for the Performing Arts
Murphy Foundation
Walmart Foundation
The Walton Family Foundation
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Name of Performance/ Performance Guide
Additional support for arts education programs comes from Candace and David Starling and all Friends of
Walton Arts Center.
For more information on the Friends of Walton Arts Center program, please call 479.571.2759 or
visit www.waltonartscenter.org/support