VOA慢速英语2013 AS IT IS 2013-07-13 Filmmaking Classes Give Disabled a Creative Outlet

 

AS IT IS 2013-07-13 Filmmaking Classes Give Disabled a Creative Outlet¹

Hello there, I’m June Simms. Welcome back for more As It Is!

The United States has given birth to many types of music, including rock and roll, jazz, country and blues². Today we hear about the increasing popularity of hip-hop music and dance.

But first, we visit a workshop in Washington where disabled individuals are learning the art of filmmaking.

Filmmaking Classes Give the Disabled a Creative Outlet 

Apple's popular tablet computer, the iPad, has changed filmmaking by providing a creative and moderately low cost way for people to express themselves. VOA’s Faiza Elmasry says the iPad has done even more for a group of disabled individuals near Washington, D.C. Katherine Cole has her report.

A group of people with physical and intellectual disabilities goes to a daycare center two times a week and become filmmakers. In a class, they learn to use iPads to shoot and edit video, with help from employees of the center and skilled filmmakers. The Creative Edge Studio is directing the filmmaking workshop.

On this day, Judy Turay is working with Nicole Chase.

“Good job. She communicates so well with me. She likes taking pictures of her friends.”

That in itself is a sign of progress for Melissa Ezelle, a project director of The Arc. The nonprofit support group provides services to the disabled. It began offering the filmmaking workshops earlier this year.

“The philosophy of this particular partnership³, the Creative Edge Digital Media Partnership is to introduce iPads to our individuals with disability so they can use them as communication tools, but also as tools to creatively express themselves through photography or through i-movie.”

Filmmaker Andrew Millington works for the Creative Edge Studio. At first, he taught the class the basics -- things like image capturing, editing and how to put things in order. Now, he cheers them on as they use those skills to create stories of their own.

Michael Steele brought in toys to be the characters in his film.

“Bunnies, pigs, horses and robots.”

“It may not be the Hollywood strict form of expression, “A” follows “B” follows “C”, so on, but I wish I could tell a story with that freedom, with that purity of expression.”

Filmmaking is part of The Arc’s holistic⁴ method of helping⁵ people with intellectual and developmental disabilities become more active in their communities. The next step, says Jessica Neely, its director of family services, will be letting them go out with their iPads to document what they see.

“The goal is to sort of move the whole model of an adult day center out from the four walls of the center and into the community.”

Andrew Millington has another goal for the films his students create.

“I’m hoping that eventually the standard reaches a point where we can screen them for audiences.”

That would familiarize those audiences to the hopes and skills of a community that is too often unseen. I’m Katherine Cole.

And I’m June Simms. You are listening to As It Is from VOA Learning English.

Hip-Hop Music and Dance Gaining in Popularity

Young African-Americans in New York are credited with developing hip-hop music and dance more than 40 years ago. Since then, hip-hop culture has become increasingly popular throughout the country and the world. Today, we hear how hip-hop or urban dance has found a new audience among Asian-Americans in Southern California.

Michelle Salazar says something magical happens when these dancers move their bodies. They could be dancing freestyle in a cypher or dance circle, or performing a carefully choreographed⁶ routine.

“My first mentor⁷, he said dancing is like touching⁸ the face of God. That’s just how I feel.”

Philippine-American Arnel Calvario is one of the first Asian-American urban dancers to gain popularity. He grew up in the 1970s and '80s. He saw other Filipinos as well as African-Americans and Latinos dancing in the streets of his neighborhood in Southern California. In junior high school, he says, he surprised some African-American girls who saw him dance.

“They’d verbally say that 'I’ve never seen an Asian guy dance like that,' you know. And that was a pivotal moment for me. In one sense you can be kind of offended by that. I felt like oh I need to do something about that.”

In college, in the early 1990s, Calvario included this uniquely American dance form in a Philippine cultural show. He formed the dance company Kaba Modern. Soon, more Asian-American dance companies began forming at universities in Southern California.

“It quickly spread to the Chinese associations, the Japanese, Vietnamese. So it was a really interesting time because, within a year, it spread so fast.”

Lorenzo Perillo is teaching a class in hip-hop dance at Cornell University this fall.

“It’s kind of like something that is seen as foreign to a particular culture and saying no, it’s not foreign, it’s actually something that we all do, we just don’t consider it; we just haven’t shifted our paradigm⁹ yet.”

African-American dancer Dineytra Lee says her ideas about urban dance shifted after she auditioned¹¹ for a hip-hop dance crew.

“And I go to the audition¹⁰ and I see nothing but Asians and I’m like, 'What’s going on here.' But it was just literally¹² a legitimate¹³ culture shock.”

What Asian-Americans saw in their community for years was not represented on television. Now Asian-American urban dancers are a large part of many of these dance competition shows.

“It was never so prominent as it is now. Now we’re all over. And in these dance shows we dominate.”

With social media, hip-hop dance no longer seems to belong to any particular group. It has spread globally with dancers around the world expressing themselves through this form of movement.

And that is As It Is for day. Thanks for listening.

1 outlet   

n.出口/路；销路；批发商店；通风口；发泄

参考例句：

• The outlet of a water pipe was blocked.水管的出水口堵住了。
• Running is a good outlet for his energy.跑步是他发泄过剩精力的好方法。

2 blues   

n.抑郁，沮丧；布鲁斯音乐

参考例句：

• She was in the back of a smoky bar singing the blues.她在烟雾弥漫的酒吧深处唱着布鲁斯歌曲。
• He was in the blues on account of his failure in business.他因事业失败而意志消沉。

3 partnership   

n.合作关系，伙伴关系

参考例句：

• The company has gone into partnership with Swiss Bank Corporation.这家公司已经和瑞士银行公司建立合作关系。
• Martin has taken him into general partnership in his company.马丁已让他成为公司的普通合伙人。

4 holistic   

adj.从整体着眼的，全面的

参考例句：

• There is a fundamental ambiguity in the use of word "whole" in recent holistic literature.在近代的整体主义著作中，“整体”这个词的用法极其含混。
• In so far as historicism is technological,its approach is not piecemeal,but "holistic".仅就历史决定论是一种技术而论，它的方法不是渐进的，而是“整体主义的”。

5 helping   

n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的

参考例句：

• The poor children regularly pony up for a second helping of my hamburger. 那些可怜的孩子们总是要求我把我的汉堡包再给他们一份。
• By doing this, they may at times be helping to restore competition. 这样一来, 他在某些时候,有助于竞争的加强。

6 choreographed   

v.设计舞蹈动作( choreograph的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• There was some carefully choreographed flag-waving as the President drove by. 总统的车经过时，人们按精心编排的动作挥舞着旗帜。
• Achim had choreographed the dance in Act II himself. 阿希姆自己设计了第2幕的舞蹈动作。 来自辞典例句

7 mentor   

n.指导者，良师益友；v.指导

参考例句：

• He fed on the great ideas of his mentor.他以他导师的伟大思想为支撑。
• He had mentored scores of younger doctors.他指导过许多更年轻的医生。

8 touching   

adj.动人的，使人感伤的

参考例句：

• It was a touching sight.这是一幅动人的景象。
• His letter was touching.他的信很感人。

9 paradigm   

n.例子，模范，词形变化表

参考例句：

• He had become the paradigm of the successful man. 他已经成为成功人士的典范。
• Moreover,the results of this research can be the new learning paradigm for digital design studios.除此之外，本研究的研究成果也可以为数位设计课程建立一个新的学习范例。

10 audition   

n.(对志愿艺人等的)面试(指试读、试唱等)

参考例句：

• I'm going to the audition but I don't expect I'll get a part.我去试音，可并不指望会给我个角色演出。
• At first,they said he was too young,but later they called him for an audition.起初，他们说他太小，但后来他们叫他去试听。

11 auditioned   

vi.试听（audition的过去式与过去分词形式）

参考例句：

• None of the actresses we have auditioned is suitable. 我们试听的这些女演员都不合适。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• What is that, from some script you auditioned for in the '40s? 什么玩意儿是你40年代试的那些剧本吗？ 来自电影对白

12 literally   

adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实

参考例句：

• He translated the passage literally.他逐字逐句地翻译这段文字。
• Sometimes she would not sit down till she was literally faint.有时候，她不走到真正要昏厥了，决不肯坐下来。

13 legitimate   

adj.合法的，合理的，合乎逻辑的；v.使合法

参考例句：

• Sickness is a legitimate reason for asking for leave.生病是请假的一个正当的理由。
• That's a perfectly legitimate fear.怀有这种恐惧完全在情理之中。