Dear WPC Dancers,
Welcome to the web tutorial for the dance “Red, Yellow, Black.” In the following pages you will find a series of videos that will guide you through learning the piece step-by-step. We have designed the choreography so people of all ability levels can learn it. Over the past two months we have tested the choreography with people with Parkinson’s in New York City to make sure it is ready for you to learn. I am confident you will be able to learn it, and perform it well!
Our group of PwPs practicing the dance in New York City
It should take you around five days to learn the whole dance. Once you go through the tutorial, I will be available by Zoom, phone or email to answer any questions you have or to help you review the material. I will likely ask most people to do one review session over Zoom. You can read more in-depth about the learning process further down below on this page.
When we all arrive in Barcelona we will have two rehearsals all together. One will be the afternoon of July 3rd, the other will be Tuesday, July 4th midday. Here are the details:
Location: International Barcelona Convention Center
Number of Performers: 32
Rehearsal Dates & Times in Barcelona:
Rehearsal #1: Monday, July 3rd; 2-5 p.m. (Room TBD)
Rehearsal #2: Tuesday, July 4th; 11am-1:30 pm (Room TBD). Lunch will be served at 1:30 p.m.. Onstage rehearsal from 2-3pm.
Performance Date: Evening of Tuesday July 4th
The first rehearsal will be a three-hour session in a room at the Convention Center. This will give us a chance to meet and practice together as a group. Midday Tuesday, we will rehearse for a couple hours in the same room, eat lunch together, and then have an hour to practice the dance on the stage where we will perform the dance. This way we will know exactly how the performance will go when we do it later on that evening! It is important that you know your part of the dance very well before arriving in Barcelona. These rehearsal sessions are for smoothing out the details of performing together and familiarizing ourselves with the space.
The piece will be the closing segment of the Congress’s opening program, performed before an international audience of researchers, physicians and people with Parkinson’s in the main hall of the Convention Center. A video recording will also be released online, which will enable even more people to view the performance all around the world. You will be an inspiration to many PwPs!
Learning Process:
There are two groups that will make up the dance: a seated group and a standing group. You and your partner will be part of the standing group.
The seated and the standing group will perform the same movements for the first part of the dance. Then about half way through, the standing group will stand up while the seated group will remain in their chairs. For the rest of the dance each group will perform complementary movements.
To learn the dance, you should mirror my actions in the tutorial videos. So if I move this way…
…you move to the right. If I move this way…
you move to the left.
If you would like to watch the videos with subtitles in English, Spanish or Japanese, you can click the “closed captions” icon in the video screen:
Repeat each video as many times as you need to learn the part. The tutorial is split into six days of instruction. You should plan for around 30 minutes of practice for the first three days, and 40 minutes for the last three. The total time of what you will learn is just under four minutes.
To practice you will need two chairs without arms and two different colored bath towels with dimensions of 52 in. x 28 in (132 cm x 71) . You will receive a red and yellow towel from me when you arrive in Barcelona, but you do not need to practice with those colors. The partner who is more able should have the role with the yellow towel. You can see what I mean in the picture below:
If you need help at any point in the learning process, please contact me. You can ask reach me by email (pam@pdmovementlab.com) or phone (646-591-4321) or we can get on Zoom and chat. No question is a bad question.
Without further ado, let’s begin!