Miming And Michael Jackson Used In Art Therapy Class For Special Needs Students
Michael Jackson and famous mime Marcel Marceu together on stage
For a mime, Julithe Garrett isn’t very quiet. His voice is loud but non-threatening, with a cheerful sing-song quality.
“Alright, alright, let me go around and give high fives to all of you,” Garrett says to the pupils in a class he’s teaching one January afternoon.
The seven students studying pantomime—a form of silent, movement-based storytelling—have just finished a physically grueling routine and Garrett is giving them a five-minute breather.
With slicked-back dark hair and a stocky build, he doesn’t fit the image typically conjured by the word “mime”: the iconic Marcel Marceau, with his white-painted face, sad eyes, and sinewy dancer’s body that moved in eel-like lines. Garrett seems more earthbound, but when he demonstrates movement to his students, his hands swoosh and flutter with warm expressiveness.
“What if we dance to a little bit of Michael Jackson?” Garrett asks. At the mere mention of the name, the students smile and a few clap their hands.
Many in the class had presented pantomime acts that Garrett choreographed to Jackson’s songs during a tribute to the singer at The Jesse H. Jones Hall for the Performing Arts, Houston’s premiere performance venue back in November.
A life-sized cardboard cutout of Jackson stands in the back of the room, seeming to look on with approval
The students hold black fedoras up to their heads while Israel Lopez, 31, the day’s “music director,” cranks up Beat It on the sound system.
The students become the band. Zachery Hatcher, 25, excitedly slides his fingers up and down the neck of an air guitar. William Mason, 23, slams invisible drumsticks against a nonexistent snare. Several students moonwalk across the floor. Once the song is finished, the group bursts into laughter, faces flushed.
The bi-weekly workshop for adults with Down syndrome, now in its third year, gives students who seldom have a public platform a chance to share their talents on stage, parents of the participants say.
Parents of children with Down syndrome often hear teachers and employers underestimating their children’s abilities, says Brenda Bearden, a volunteer at the Down Syndrome Association of Houston (DSAH), which hosts the class. Her daughter Kristan, 25, has been enrolled for the past two years.
The program provides a rare chance for the students to be part of something—but more than that, she says, “it has built my daughter’s confidence so much.”
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