Australian Culture with Paul Taylor (Multidiscipline Residencies, Performances and Workshops)
Paul Taylor performs Wonders Down Under, Australian Music & Stories. Wonders Down Under is an interactive multifaceted performance. Students come away with a unique look at the wonderful Aussie character through an exciting mix of stories, songs, dance, painting, theater and didgeridoo – drawing comparisons in American history and culture. The performance honors both the Aboriginal and European roots of Australia. Students will be introduced to the Aboriginal spiritual worldview – Bush University, the Aboriginal creation story, teaching us to pay attention, care for our water, care for our land – to care for our place wherever we may be.
WORKSHOPS/RESIDENCIES; Paul Taylor offers one week Australian immersion residencies to model & teach students through an arts integrative, interactive, multi-disciplined experience of story, song, dance, painting & theater, with choices of 13 workshops. The residency is designed to immerse the students in various aspects of Australian Aboriginal & European culture, stories, history, music, instruments, art & dance. He also offers twelve workshops on Australian culture, music and stories.
Paul’s residencies with students are a blend of storytelling; theater; visual arts in the form of murals, traditional rock art, and craft such as didjeridoo painting; folk music of Australia including song, story songs and traditional instruments; folk dance; geography; history; and social studies.
The objectives achieved in Taylor’s presentations are:
– To introduce students to the European migration to Australia through storytelling theater.
– To present Australian culture as it was in the founding of the country and as it is today through interactive songs and stories.
– To draw parallels between US history and Australian history.
– To introduce students to the culture and traditional stories of both European and Aboriginal Australia.
– To introduce students to the Aboriginal music, instruments and art.
– To explain the physics found in the sounds of transitional instruments and in the workings of the boomerang.
Paul presents traditional instruments and song from both the European and Aboriginal cultures. The presentations include the context, language and story of several folk songs; traditional instruments such as the didjeridoo, boomerang, lagerphone and clap stick; the purpose of song and the songlines in the Aboriginal tradition.