Dicki Johnson Macy is headed out to Washington D.C. this week to oversee the implementation of her Rainbowdance and Isadora Duncan Pedagogy for Children programs, both of which were launched earlier this year.
Dicki Johnson Macy a legacy holder in the Isadora Duncan curriculum, having studied with Anita Zahn as a child in New York , and later with Sylvia Gold in Boston, has carried forward this tradition of honor, grace and reciprocity over the past 30 years in her work with children. Cynthia Word learned of Johnson Macy’s curriculum for children while attending workshops for the Isadora Duncan International Symposium in 2013, 2015, 2017, Cynthia, Executive Director of Word Dance Theatre, an organization that brings the work of Isadora to student dancers as well as to the theatre world through multi media events, was in need of a program for children. As the Duncan repertory for children has been limited to those, such as Dicki, who studied with Duncan protégées as children, the curriculum has not been widely available. In Boston Jen Mueller and Rachel Assaf are current teachers in training with Johnson Macy. Now Cynthia’s teaching artists, Rebecca Lalllande and Sylvana Christopher are training and being supervised in the curricula for 5-7 year old and 8-11 year old students.
Ingrid Zimmer, Executive Director of “Inner City Inner Child” a 25 year old non profit agency that brings art programs to inner city children, learned of Johnson Macy’s early intervention program, Rainbowdance, at the same symposium. She approached Johnson Macy to train her teaching artists in the intervention as well in an adapted program designed for Infants. The program in now being launched through Educare, where Dicki conducted demonstration classes for the administrative and education staff. All were moved by the manner in which children engaged in the program and have hired ICIC to conduct a twenty week cycle in their infant, toddler, and preschool classrooms. We are all proud of a successful year and look forward to our continued alliances with our new D.C. partners.
