CITYSTEP | YOUTH
Sabrina Peck has been passionate about telling young people's stories since she was in college and created CityStep--a public school program for city kids promoting creative self-expression and community-building through dance.
"Sabrina Peck has found a way to uncork the wild energy inside every 12-year-old and spray it out over the audience like so much champagne." —The Boston Phoenix
CITYSTEP
Founded by Sabrina Peck at Harvard University, CityStep is an arts and social impact program that connects college students and city kids in a transformative performing arts partnership. Teams of college student volunteers travel to public schools to teach a yearlong curriculum of creative self-expression and collaboration. The CityStep experience of creativity, connection and mentorship is a powerful bulwark against the record-breaking levels of isolation, depression and disconnection experienced by schoolchildren today. CityStep is now at Harvard, Penn, Yale, Princeton and Columbia.
TO THE RIVER
The conversion of New York City's pier 25 into a glorious park was the inspiration for To the River, sponsored by Dancing in the Streets and the Hudson River Park Conservancy. I led three weeks of workshops with 40 children from NYC's Chelsea and Clinton neighborhoods, generating movement, dance and scenes, and recording interviews with them about their memories of water and impressions of the Hudson River. For many kids living right nearby, the performance and the new park brought them to the banks of the Hudson for the first time.
NICKELODEON
I directed Everybody Over Here, an exuberant on-air promotion for the Nickelodeon Channel, with a group of New York City kids. The material grew out of a day-long workshop in creative movement, collaboration and self-expression, filmed by talented cameraman Russell Fine at the Sailor's and Soldiers monument. Producer Alicia Sams and I co-edited.
PRESENT TENSE
Present Tense grew out of my two-week Artist-in-the-Schools residency at Martha's Vineyard High School, sponsored by The Yard. Aided by my collaborators, I worked with theatre arts students on an original piece about growing up on the Island. I used interviews, writing exercises and movement improvisations to generate the material, then interwove music and sound. These students from different social circles formed strong ensemble, sharing personal and challenging material.
ODAKLE STE
Where are You From, Where are You Now, Where are You Going? was the culmination of my residency in a refugee camp in Croatia, where I worked with Bosnian Muslim teens. Collaborator Sonja Kuftinec and I conducted writing and movement workshops, shaping and developing the material into a profoundly moving performance that we presented to the camp's residents. This was perhaps my most challenging and rewarding project. Learn more about Odakle Ste.
Lincoln Center Theater Education
I was asked by Kati Koener, the director of Education at Lincoln Center Theater, to lead a movement exploration of themes in Romeo and Juliet. Scores of public school students came to Lincoln Center for a deep dive into the play and I took them in classes of 30, round-robin style. . Exploring the themes of the play with young people through movement was pure joy. Drummer Laminn Thieu provided the accompaniment.
See also Too (2) Noble Brothers in Cornerstone Theater Company under Choreography; and see Residencies for more about Peck's teaching and community-based theater projects.