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From:
Valerie Sutton Date: Tue Dec 14, 1999 2:51 am Subject: Re: Writing Legs & Feet | |
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>Nicaraguan Sign Language also occasionally makes signs outside "traditional >sign space", not to mention name-signs, which can be made most anywhere >(example: Bill Clinton -- don't even think it -- the sign involves his weak >knee.) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Grin. I probably already told you all about the time when we had a big celebration for the 5th birthday of DanceWriting? It was 1979 and I had already been teaching DanceWriting at the Boston Conservatory of Music's Dance Department for three years. That meant we had some truly skilled Dancewriters, because DW was required for graduation as a dance major. And some were outstanding DW stenographers...very skilled in DW Shorthand. Including one from Brazil...Fernanda. Anyway...we had this big party at the Conservatory, with around 100 people attending a performance, where dancers danced something, and then we showed the audience how we would write those dance movements in DanceWriting. I have the performance on video...and one of the important parts of the evening was writing some gestures that were similar to a signed language...it was a Haiku...an oriental poem portrayed with the hands - all written for the audience in detail in DW...or was it SW? - ha! You can see I barely know where DW stops and SW begins these days... Anyway - the reason I told you this story is that in DW, we used to call the stick figure "Stanley the Stick Figure". Giving him the name "Stanley" made children giggle when they learned how to read DW. And then we had "Stella the Stick Figure" too ;-) At this celebration, we had a big picture of Stanley holding a birthday cake in the hallway, saying "Happy Fifth Birthday, Stanley" Well you guessed it....(this is a college after all)..some students came by and took a pen and "wrote a part of the body not normally written!" As people entered the performance they were greeted with the facts of life! I told you we could write everything - ha! And the next morning, facing my class, none of us could keep a straight face about it.... Val ;-) |
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