This past year Dicki Johnson Macy has been implementing her dance curriculum, The Art & Technique of Isadora Duncan, with colleague Cynthia Word, Artistic Director of Word Dance Theater in Washington, D.C. This semester launches a brand new year of classes as teachers prepare to inspire new generations of Duncan dancers. We look forward to the continued collaboration between BCF and WDT, as Duncan programming for youth continues to flourish.

Please click here for information about Word Dance Theater’s Duncan Youth classes in Washington, D.C.

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.

Greetings!

Our photographer Kelsie McGinity (Rainbowdance intern, 2016-2017) took some wonderful photos at our fundraiser on January 26, 2018. We are so excited to share them with you! Our first fundraiser in 20 years was a big success, and we are deeply grateful to everyone who attended.  It was a pleasure sharing our work with you. Thanks to your donations, we are now able to provide the following pro bono services to our local communities here in Massachusetts:

The past six months have been exciting for the Boston Children’s Foundation, as we’ve shared Rainbowdance with communities near and far! Please take a moment to share in the fun:

• Rainbowdance has been taking off in California. Since September, Dicki Johnson Macy and Robert Macy have spent one week a month with the Sonoma Charter School, training staff and working with students. Here is a Rainbowdance session at the school led by Endorsed Rainbowdance Practitioner Nina Saraceno.

• In addition to monthly trainings with the SCS, this January Dicki trained members of the Sonoma California Network in Rainbowdance. Trainees included employees from: Napa State Hospital, Valley of the Moon Foster Program, and Hanna Boys Center. She was assisted by Alicia Brewster, her former Lesley University intern.

• Locally, Rainbowdance trainings have been in full swing. In September, Jen Mueller led her first Basic Rainbowdance training, with co-leader and former intern Ashley Lemmonds, training Head Start staff in Springfield, MA. This December, Jen and BCF employee Rachel Assaf trained Vanessa Perrin in the Advanced Rainbowdance Model. Vanessa is pictured here in Haiti, where she uses Rainbowdance in her work with children.

If you or your organization is interested in being trained in Rainbowdance, contact Dicki Johnson Macy (dickijmacy@gmail.com) or Jen Mueller (jenmueller@bostoncf.org)

In response to so many of you who have inquired about our potential involvement in the Nepal earthquake disasters, Robert and Dicki would like people to know the following:
We have trained a large team of first responders in Nepal who are currently onsite implementing the CBI trauma intervention.

We will not personally be responding as it is our policy to train the local clinicians to care for their own communities following such events.

Thank you all for your concern and support.

Tips to avoid status as “Disaster Tourists” 

For those who are interested in volunteering in Nepal, please:

1) Know who you are reporting to

2) Have a specific job description

Otherwise, in spite of your altruism and desire to help during such international disasters, you will fall under the huge umbrella of “Disaster tourism.”