A SAMPLING of our PROGRAMS
FOR SCHOOLS:
Performances, Workshops, Concerts,
Integrated Arts-in-Education Residencies
- Music, Dance, Theatre, Storytelling
- Fine Arts & Art History
- Living History Faires & Festivals
- Medieval & Renaissance AIE Catalog 12-pg. pdf
- Colonial Conviviality: Early American Traditions page, photo link
- "15 Years on the Erie Canal"
Participatory Musical Theater pdf
- NYS/Erie Canal Music, Dance, Theatre Residencies
- French Music & Dance Traditions
- "Music, World Instruments, & The Science of Sound" pdf
- "Bawshou & the Dragon" Traditional Chinese Musical Pageantry and Storytelling pdf
- MANY MORE, INQUIRE!
- PLUS, any of the programs listed under "Long Ago & Far Away"
"LONG AGO & FAR AWAY"
Historic Storytelling & Musical Theatre, and Concerts for Children & Families;
Library Summer Reading Programs
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Get a Clue/Get a Cue On the Erie Canal with participatory
"15 Miles on the Erie Canal Folk Fun Operetta" pdf
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Get a Clue-"Musical Instrument Mysteries:
Hurdy-Gurdies, Bagpipes, Rommelpots, Lutes, & Harps" pdf
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Double Treasure participatory storytelling + concert program:
"Stone Soup"
+"The Hurdy Gurdy Children's Concert" pdf
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Double Treasure participatory storytelling + concert program:
"The Boy Who Went to Visit the North Wind" and
"Who Has Heard the Wind" pdf
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"Bawshou & the Dragon" Musical Folktelling of China Performance, with Maskmaking, Musicmaking, and Dragon Dance Workshop options pdf
BARDIC PERFORMANCES for Older Audiences:
- "Tristan & Iseult: A Harper's Tale" page link
- "Beowulf" Bardic Performance and Workshop
MUSEUMS & HISTORIC SITES
Concerts of Historic Music, more page link
- "Bards, Bagpipes, & Rhymers"
- "Terpsichore" Early Music for the
Muse of Dance
- "Shakespeare's Garden: Flowers, Birdsong, & Fountains"
- Thematic concerts for All Seasons, All Holidays
- Workshop menu- historic music, dance, crafts
HISTORIC DANCE Workshops & Events
- Shakespearean Renaissance Dances
- French Traditional & Renaissance Dances
- Dances of the British Isles
- Seasonal & Ceremonial Dances
- Jane Austen Historic Ball page
- Dickens Victorian "Fezziwig's Ball"
- NYS Heritage, Erie Canal Traditions
- American Heritage Traditions
- International Heritage Traditions
HOLIDAY CONCERTS & PAGEANTS
Publicity Photographslink
Misc. Photo Indexlink
Some words from young scholarslink
(above under construction)
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY/RESUME printable pdf
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Part of our Medieval/Renaissance "Instrumentarium"
Click here to see more of our instruments...
Or here to see a larger version of this photo
Arts-In-Education Residencies & Resources
RESOURCES:
Click here for a 12-pg pdf of our Medieval & Renaissance AIE Catalog.
Click here for a short list of our Medieval performances and workshops.
Click here for webpage detailing our NYS Heritage and Erie Canal performances, workshops, and residencies.
Click here for webpage detailing Colonial Conviviality programs for school and public venues.
RESIDENCIES:
This past year we enjoyed a very full, and extremely interesting range of interdisciplinary
residencies encompassing Medieval, Renaissance, American and Multicultural Heritage themes. From inner city schools to private institutions, from primary to high school ages, each school held a huge diversity of charms and amazements in both the students and teachers we worked with. There were also several new programs, stimulating our own creative development:
Multicultural Heritage Music, Dance, Fine, and Cooking Arts was a highly participatory residency that compared these art forms between four major cultural entities, exploring similarities and differences in their historic roots, as well as in contemporary culture. At the sime time, we explored regional differences within each culture. The residency culmination included music and dance performances for school-wide enjoyment, as well as a multicultural cook-off.
Canterbury Tales: We continue to add new programs to enhance our twin scripts "Chanticleer Tale", based on Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and "Renard the Fox" from the medieval French tradition. These residencies are linked to curriculum in all subject areas, and are complemented by an ever-growing detailed teacher's guide, to maximize those tie-ins. Possibilities for related developments include historic multicultural studies, folklore and fairytales, animal personification and mythology, and much more.
NYS Bicentennial Celebrations...a small community in the Catskills asked us to
design another specialty program, this time to celebrate that village's 200th
birthday. We wrote a tall tale storyline full of local references, highlighted by performances
prepared by every school child K-6, including regionally related songs, dances,
and scenarios. The preparatory workshops and culminating performance were a
smashing success, and provide an excellent model for personalized Heritage
Celebrations of all kinds.
Our month working in Europe has also brought us tremendous new images of illuminated manuscripts, sculpture, architecture, and more to add to our medieval arts/history/culture slide shows. They provide resources for exciting new programs, and enhance our long-established programs.
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What is Unique About Bells & Motley Consort?
"A Bells & Motley performance is a journey, a vibrant cultural immersion for all the senses. At the heart and center of all Bells & Motley's performances is the engagingly realized HISTORIC MUSIC, brought to life on an array of Medieval, Renaissance, and Traditional Folk instruments. Thematic programs are unified by a POETIC SPIRIT and IMAGINATION that illuminates the artists' harmonious vision, and resonate with an authenticity that comes from their very unique experiences and perspectives. Look closely, and you'll see under the music that very often the performance will bear witness to deep involvements with literary and visual art forms as well."
We come to our performances with the combined experiences of well-seasoned presenters, historic instrument builders, extensively traveled cultural historians and musicologists. We both also readily confess to a heavy involvement in documentary arts, literary and visual arts history and techniques as well. If you add to this a passion for teaching Arts & Humanities to people of all generations, and you will see how our seemingly disparate menu of music, dance, creative writing, theater performances, and workshops are all meant fit together. There's the big picture.
Specialty themes and programs include Medieval and Renaissance arts & history; operettas and pageants; community collaborations, pageantry, and spectacles; participatory folkloric storytelling from European, American, and Asian traditions; Multicultural Dance and Ceremonial Arts. Our research and performances have enriched us in many wonderful places around the globe.
GRANTS are available to provide funding for both our SCHOOL Arts-in-Education Residencies, and our PUBLIC Performances, Workshops, and Residencies. We are listed on the rosters of numerous arts agencies, and will do our best to help point you to available resources. We offer teacher development programs, and it is our pleasure to work closely with schools to creatively support their curriculum.
And yes, we DELIGHT in providing music, pageantry, and dancing for weddings and all manner of other ceremonial, community, historic, and holiday functions!
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Our Instrumentarium...
... Includes a wide range of strings, winds, reeds and percussion instruments. A typical Bells & Motley performance is a great opportunity to oggle many incredible instruments, both familiar and rare, from Medieval to Folkloric to Modern, covering a span 1000 years' time.
We also use these instruments to vividly introduce concepts in the Science of Sound, and to stimulate creative instrument building projects. For many programs, we come with some of our current partly-finished instrument building projects in tow, and pass them around, for participants to study sound-making techniques "from the inside out."
John: Hurdy Gurdies and nykelharpa (a medieval keyed fiddle); Various bagpipes including Northumbrian smallpipes, Breton biniou, veuze, cabrette; Winds and reeds from crumhorns, shawms, and recorders, to flavioles, pipes & tabor drums; medieval fiddles, lute, viols, guitar, citterns, and vocals. Other traditonal folk instruments include banjo, mandolin, and fiddle.
Sondra: A full complement of early and traditional harps, including Celtic lever harps, a Scottish wire strung harp, Gothic bray harps; Hammered dulcimers, and related mid-eastern Kanun and other international members of the zither family; Winds and reeds including Breton bombarde, recorders, crumhorns, shawms; hand drums, and vocals. Other traditional folk instruments played include button accordeons (as enjoyed in America beginning in the early 19th century, and still popular throughout Europe), and a splendid guzheng (a 5 foot lengthwise harp-like affair from China ).
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This www.bellsandmotley.com web site and its content is the exclusive property of Sondra Bromka and John Bromka.
©2008 Sondra Bromka. All rights reserved
in all media.
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