New Victory Arts Break: BLACK GIRL: Linguistic Play

New Victory Arts Break videos and activities are designed to have your family ready and raring for showtime before you even leave home. Here’s how to use them! All set? Then let’s get creative together and prep your kid for BLACK GIRL: Linguistic Play with the activities below.

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New Victory Arts Break videos are filmed at the New Victory Theater. We acknowledge that New Victory resides on the seized homeland of the Lenape people and the intertribal territory of many First Nations. We celebrate and pay deep respect to all Indigenous peoples, past, present and future, and we encourage you to learn more about these vibrant communities.

Did You Know?

Tony-nominated choreographer Camille A. Brown’s BLACK GIRL: Linguistic Play explores the complexities of Black girlhood, using childhood games and African American movement traditions—stepping, Double Dutch, Juba, ring shout—to convey memories of self-discovery and sisterhood. Read more about the show and its creator, Camille A. Brown, and then watch a short video trailer below.

• Rather than one long dance piece, BLACK GIRL: Linguistic Play is a series of three dynamic duets, each exploring sisterly bonds at different ages.
• “Linguistic Play” in the show’s title refers to the playfulness of dance, gesture, rhythm and rhyme as a common language of Black girlhood, rather than a theatrical play.
• Hand games and social dances in Black communities rely heavily on rhythmic body percussion. After the Stono Rebellion of 1739, enslavers outlawed drumming because it was used as a form of communication. Enslaved Africans then put the percussion into their bodies, drumming on their thighs, clapping their hands and stomping their feet to make music.

Try It Out!

Do you have a favorite hand-clapping game? Use it for inspiration, just like Camille A. Brown, and choreograph a dance that follows the rhythms of the game!

Aliya, TJ and Siobhan had the best time making new moves to the clapping rhythms of Numbers. Get inspired by hand-clapping games that you know, and work to make a new piece of expressive art!

1. Ask your kid to think of a hand-clapping game that they know, teach them one that you know or seek out a new one together.
2. Listen to the beat that the claps make. Feel out the rhythm, listen for repeating patterns and think about how different parts of the rhythm might translate into movement.
3. Work together to choreograph a dance inspired by the game’s rhythm! Try incorporating stomps, sways, two-steps or whatever other moves feel right.

Get into the beat and have fun! Take turns performing the dance and playing the game that inspired it. Share your creations with friends and family, and if they know the game, try performing and playing together at the same time!

Talk About It!

As you make your way to the theater, get your kid in the mindset of the show, BLACK GIRL: Linguistic Play, and its themes. Ask them:

• What are/were some of your favorite playground games? How did you learn those games?
• Is there something about your identity—a specific trait or special talent—that makes you proud? How can you celebrate it?
• What does community mean to you, and what power do you think it has?

Look for It in the Lobby!

In the lower lobby at the New Victory, you can learn about the history of jump roping and Double Dutch. Check out these sources to continue learning at home!

• “The Magic of Black Girls’ Play” at The New York Times and The Games Black Girls Play on Bookshop.org, both by ethnomusicologist Dr. Kyra Gaunt
• “How the Jump Rope Got Its Rhythm,” a Small Thing Big Idea video from TED by Dr. Kyra Gaunt covering the music and rhythms that jumping rope has helped create
• Two short histories of Double Dutch from African American Registry and Jump Rope Institute
• The International Rope Skipping Federation’s history of competitive rope skipping
• The rise and resurgence of Double Dutch as described by Chicago nonprofit Street Ropez

And the fun doesn’t have to stop here! Follow along with New Victory Teaching Artists and Education staff in a few Arts Break videos and activities from the archive that that highlight more dance traditions and invite you to move.

Learn some house dance history and a menu of moves from New Victory Teaching Artist Olney Edmondson.

Explore stepping to music from different cultures with Asha John from New Victory Education.

Choreograph the story of your morning routine with New Victory Teaching Artist Dwayne Brown.