Rocka My Soul (modified)- from alvin Ailey's Revelations

Getting to teach about Alvin Ailey and his most famous piece, Revelations, is one of my favorite units with my 4th and 5th graders. Living in the Bay Area, I am lucky that the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater comes to visit us each spring (except for this year - sad trombone) and teach a community dance class as well as teaching hundreds of enthusiastic dancers of all ages and abilities some modified choreography to sections of Revelations that we then flashmob in Sproul Plaza on UC Berkeleyʻs campus. It was a phenomenal experience to watch Hope Boykin teach, and I think I absorbed and adopted many parts of her teaching style.

First, Iʻll share with you a playlist I made with some important information about Ailey, Revelations, and his process:

Here is my practice video for students doing the modified choreography to "Rocka My Soul," the finale piece in Revelations.

Here's Ailey's company doing the unmodified choreography - look for the adapted movements!

It won't embed, but you can click HERE to see the video from the 2018 Flash Mob (and you can hear Hope Boykin cueing us).

If you'd like even more fiddly notes, here is a doc with the sequences, and the choreography sketches I made at the workshop (you probably need an SFUSD email to access these)

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