In 1923, she travelled to Beijing to visit her aunt, Emma Konantz, a professor of mathematics at Yenching University in Beijing and a lover of Chinese culture. When Benton was a child, she followed her father, a university scholar of some repute, across Europe and Asia. In 1923, he brought his collection together for an exhibit titled “Oriental Theatricals.” Headlined by his collection of Chinese shadow puppets, the exhibition caused a sensation and drew the attention of Pauline Benton, a woman who would take the alluring images of China’s puppeteers off the museum shelves and resurrect them for a new century and a new country. He spent the first 15 years in the role traveling across China, collecting an estimated 19,000 cultural artifacts from various time periods in the country’s history. He also used wax phonograph cylinders to record puppetry performances.īetween 19, Laufer served as the lead anthropologist at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. During his travels, he spent the then considerable sum of $600 on a near-bankrupt Beijing puppetry troupe, acquiring all its screens, scripts, and mannequins in the process. In 1902, Laufer, who knew many East Asian languages, explored China at the behest of the American Museum of Natural History. by Berthold Laufer, an American Orientalist. Shadow puppet shows were first brought to the U.S. The remarkable story of how this happened begins with a man, before becoming inextricably entwined with the lives of three women. Practitioners in the United States, however, managed to preserve the art form throughout the last century and into the present. Although it was added to UNESCO’s list of intangible cultural heritage of humanity in 2011, it is rare to see an authentic performance in China. Since the beginning of the 20th century, the rise of movies and television, and later the attacks on traditional folk arts during the Cultural Revolution, have sent the popularity of shadow puppet performance into a gradual decline. Behind a large screen, backlit so that it’s translucently illuminated, handmade donkey-hide puppets dance across the stage, acting out a wide range of stories from China’s formidable canon of classics. He performed a one-man educational theater program for more than 100,000 students across the United States, and has worked with students in Belarus, India, Laos, and Lithuania.Traditional Chinese shadow puppetry is one of the country’s most spectacular folk arts. Daniel has been a National Teaching Artist with the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts since 2010. He leads residencies for students K-8, presents workshops for teachers Pre-K to 12, and as the Director of Firelight Shadow Theater, conducts assembly programs of best-loved folktales from around the world. Daniel has pioneered the use of shadow puppetry in diverse formal and informal educational settings around the world. See you in the land of shadows, where you and your students will experience the magic and wonder of the world's "original screen time."ĭaniel Barash, National Consultant with Focus 5, Inc., holds a master’s degree in Education from New York University and applies his strong background in education to his art form. By the end of the workshop, participants obtain both the skills and confidence necessary to successfully introduce this unique teaching strategy to their classroom communities. and Kennedy Center Teaching Artist, participants learn shadow puppetry performance techniques, make-and-take their own shadow puppets, and explore standards-based curricular connections across subject areas and grade levels. In this foundational workshop with Daniel Barash, Consultant with Focus 5, Inc. Shadow puppetry, with its bold shapes and dramatic movement, is a highly engaging art form that naturally lends itself to the Arts Integration approach to teaching and learning.
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