Arts Education for Everyone: Join our Santa Cruz Gives fundraising campaign! 

With your help, we can train passionate local artists, expand arts programs, and ensure every student has access to the transformative power of the arts.

Learn More
Return
Karl

MoveSpeakSpin

North CountySouth CountyDancePerformance

Bio

MoveSpeakSpin, the parent organization for the Dr. Schaffer and Mr. Stern Dance Ensemble, is a dance company that tours extensively and internationally. With the help of their associates, Karl Schaffer and Erik Stern have created performances for children and adults that explore dance, mathematics, history, and storytelling with highly physical dance and theatricality, using props like ropes, string figures, finger geometry, giant tangrams, and ordinary water bottles.

Performances

Nevertheless She Persisted: The Daughters of Hypatia, A Mathematical Herstory.

This four-woman dance concert highlights great women mathematicians throughout history, celebrating their lives and struggles to create groundbreaking mathematics. The performance encourages all students, especially girls, with a love for math, as it provides inspiring role models and helps counter-act the myths and stereotypes surrounding the discipline of mathematics. Historical sections of the show are drawn together by dances exploring circular motifs, while the dancers recount intriguing stories from the women’s lives and perform patterns suggestive of their mathematical work. Included are playful dances with oversize hoops, a rhythm dance using plastic water bottles, and a trio for six hands. A 50-page study guide accompanies the performance.

Grade level: K-12

Requirements: Multipurpose room or auditorium; wood floor preferable and 45-50 min.

Fee: One Performance: $750, Two Consecutive Performances: $1,000, Three Consecutive Performances: $1,300

Pitter Pattern

Our newest performance, Pitter Pattern, explores beautiful and enchanting patterns in dance, rhythm, and shape, as it draws connections between the art of mathematics and the science of dance. Dances include rhythmic escapades with ordinary water bottles and wooden rulers, surprising visuals with LED glow balls, and play with movement symmetries. The performers engage the students with humorous mathematical audience interactions.

Grade level: K-8

Requirements: Multipurpose room or auditorium; wood floor preferable and 45-50 min.

Fee: One Performance: $750, Two Consecutive Performances: $1,000, Three Consecutive Performances: $1,300

Movement and Mathematics

(Workshop) Karl Schaffer (along with company co-director Erik Stern) is on the Teaching Artist Roster of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and travels extensively throughout the United States presenting professional development and student workshops which link dance and mathematics in easily accessible and engaging classroom activities. These activities connect closely with Common Core Standards, including elements of rhythm, symmetry, sequence, ratio, and shape. They involve participants in solving exciting multi-step and open-ended problems in a variety of mathematical areas with connections to the performing and visual arts. Each activity can be tailored for teachers or students, and includes movement compositions as well as kinesthetic explorations of mathematics. Professional development workshops may range in length from one hour to all or multi-day residencies, will be taught by Karl Schaffer, and may involve assistance of company dancer Saki. Contact us for professional development pricing information.

Grade level: all

Requirements: Classroom with cleared space. After School requires program enrollment.

After-School Availability

Fee: $100/hr ($80/hr for additional consecutive hours)