After a two-year COVID hiatus, Methow Arts is bringing performers back into the schools. Methow Arts’ school performance series gives students and school staff the opportunity to enjoy educational and entertaining performing artists from around the region and around the world and to learn more about music, dance, theater, and other performing arts. The diversity of the performers and the wide range of art forms they represent enhance students’ cultural appreciation and global awareness. As one teacher said, “Methow Arts brings the world into our school.”

We’ll kick off the school performance series in late October, with Nobuntu: an a-cappella group of five women from Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, in Africa. Nobuntu’s repertoire is a fusion of traditional Zimbabwean rooted music, Gospel, Afro-Jazz and Crossover with traditional instruments, some dance movements, and minimal percussion, allowing the ensemble’s strong voices to ring out.

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Nobuntu’s mission is the belief that music is the most important and original wheel of change, way of expression of a new generation of young women singers with the uniqueness to transcend racial, tribal, religious, gender and economic boundaries. Nobuntu celebrates through their songs and dance the identities of being an African woman.

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In March 2023, TaikoProject will perform in schools. TaikoProject was founded in 2000 in Los Angeles, California, by a group of young emerging taiko drummers. They were seeking to create a truly American style of taiko, blending the traditional taiko forms in which they were raised with an innovative and fresh approach to the Japanese drum. Taiko is an ancient—more than 2000 years old!— Japanese form of percussion using large drums. The drums range in size from roughly a snare drum (“shime-daiko”) to drums as large as a car (the “o-daiko”).

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Long a Methow Valley favorite for its original, quirky re-imaginings of familiar stories, Missoula Children’s Theatre (MCT) will host a one-week theatre arts experience in November for 1st-12th graders in the Methow Valley, culminating in a public performance of “The Little Mermaid” in a musical theatre style on November 12. The goals of MCT—teaching children life skills, social skills, teamwork, and confidence—are aligned with the Methow Valley School District’s mission of encouraging the pursuit of excellence and preparing them for a world in which life-long learning is critical to their success and happiness.

INFO/DATES: methowarts.org, info@methowartsalliance.org