By Karen Bloom
How about a modern dance performance? That's right a dance production for children! The Long Island Children's Museum is chock full of unique activities for the kids, and this is certainly one of them. So you think modern dance might bore the kids? Forget it. Not when the title of the dance to be performed is "The Invention of the Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich," and not when the dancers are a group called The Corner Store Dance Company. This rollicking troupe's slogan is "We sing. We dance. We do everything from A to Z."The Corner Store Dance Company might not really do everything, but everything they do makes dance accessible, understandable and entertaining for children and their parents."What we do, our movement vocabulary, comes from things that children do, pretending to be things, running and jumping." said dancer and troupe founder Pamela Finney.The audience also becomes involved with the performance. They participate as the performers weave the audience into the stories. "They don't come up on stage and perform as individuals but they do movements and sing while sitting in their seats," Ms. Finney explained. The kids do it and the parents do it too." The dance story line is narrated, so there's no need for the audience to know what the performance is about in advance or be puzzled about what's happening on stage."The Invention of the Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich" is a lively, comedic dance performance based on stories, poems and songs set to original music. The troupe uses live music and a variety of instruments. Five performers-in jelly-bean colored clothes-dance, sing and play a wacky orchestra that includes bells, wood blocks, piano, drums, banjo, slide whistle, kazoos, a train whistle, even a duck call. The show's title piece finds the performers depicting scientists who take a time machine in search of lunch. By the story's end, the peanut butter and jelly sandwich has been invented, and the audience is enthusiastically singing and chanting to commemorate it. The program also includes: Stop That Pancake!, The History of an Apple Pie, The Giants and the Mice, The Beach Ball Bounce, Juba, and Umbrellas!.Ms. Finney said that her company offers "something different from other dance that children may have been exposed to because we do movement they can do themselves. And the pieces we do are humorous. Children laugh out loud during the shows."Since its founding in 1976, the Corner Store Dance Company has performed for more than 100,000 children in Northeastern United States. Their performances are designed both to entertain and to educate. Audience suggestions allow children the opportunity to see their ideas become part of the performance, and active participation makes the experience immediate and fun. Corner Store programs also reinforce basic curricular skills in a variety of ways. The troupe provides study guides, for instance, to provide language arts follow-up. At the same time, Corner Store presents dance as an art form and makes it understandable to children. Ms. Finney, Artistic Director and founder, has served as director of the Modern Dance Center of Westchester, in Bronxville, NY, since 1966. She is a principal dancer in the Laura Pawel Dance Company of New York City and studied dance with the famed dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham. She has taught modern dance technique, choreography, composition, and teaching methods at Wesleyan University and Hunter College for more than 20 years, and has performed for many experimental modern dance choreographers in NYC. With composer Ed DiLello, she founded The Corner Store Dance Company while they were Visiting Artists in Dance at Wesleyan University. The troupe presents a different original show each year.
