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This week in Healthy Bodies, Healthy Minds, we kicked off the summer with some hip hop dancing! Brian visited the class to share some awesome moves, and showed us how to blend different hip hop styles to create exciting dance routines. By the end of the class, the girls were well on their way to mastering a routine choreographed by Brian, and some were inspired to start coming up with routines of their own!

On Saturday, Girls Club teamed up with Harvestworks to create our very own electronic music ensemble! Suzanne and Bonnie showed us how to make unique instruments with cardboard boxes, acontact microphones, and found objects. First we attached the microphone to the box, then we put all sorts of crazy soundmakers inside, like marbles, rubber bands, and electric toothbrushes! After decorating our instruments, we put on a concert with Suzanne and Bonnie for the rest of the girls in Saturday programs. We were a big hit! Next stop, the Electronic Art Festival!

We ended our Geek Girls class today by working on the Arduino circuit boards! It takes a lot of quick thinking and attention to detail to figure out how to make a circuit that works. It was sad to say goodbye to Geek Girls, but it was also exciting to think that, next time Geek Girls meets, it will be in the new building!

We kicked off our weekend with a great session of Zumba! Denise came in and had us moving (and sweating) with meringue, salsa, and other dances from all over the world. It was hot outside, but it was even hotter in here!

We ended our fantastic Artist Workshop series with a bang, pow, zap! Today Lenora taught us all about drawing cartoons. She explained that the key to drawing cartoons is in the proportions- most figures are exaggerated, with things like small bodies and large facial features. After learning the basics, we all did self-portraits, cartoon style!

This week, the Animation class finally unveiled the Girls Club Rules and Guidelines video, which we have been hard at work on for the last four months. Over the course of the project, many of our girls have contributed to the video in the form of drawings, claymation, photography, and music. We are very proud to be able to call this video a girl-made video, and the girls have a lot to be proud of. However, none of this would have been possible without Beck, our fearless director, editor and teacher. Beck has done an incredible job guiding the production of this video, and we are so thankful for her dedication and patience with the project. It’s been an incredible experience to work with Beck, and it was extremely satisfying for everyone to be able to see this project through from beginning to end. We started this project with the goal of creating a fun and memorable way of reviewing the guidelines and rules for our programs, rather than just reading off a list of rules (which no one really enjoys doing), and I’m happy to say we succeeded.  And now, without further ado, we invite you to enjoy the Girls Club Rules & Guidelines video!

Lower East Side Girls Club – Rules & Guidelines from beck underwood on Vimeo.

8 ways YOU can make the Girls Club even more AWESOME!

For our final Photography class of the session, we visited the Cuchifritos Gallery at the Essex Street Market.  The current exhibition focuses on the market itself from the perspective of the vendors. The exhibition features photographs taken by vendors, as well as a slide show from the Lower Eastside Girls Club of pictures of Essex Street Market taken by our many photography girls over the years. It was a very fun exhibit that gave a inside look at such a lively and important place in the Lower East Side. We also visited our very own Girls Club store in the market, La Tiendita, to admire all the delicious treats and girl-made wares.

This was our very last day of production on the Girls Club Guidelines video, and in somewhat of a change of pace, we spent the entire class outside shooting some cute stop motion photography scenes. All of the girls wore the awesome tie-dye shirts that we made last week, and acted out different scenes to the “You Represent the Girls Club” sequence.  It was a blast to film, and with cameos from Girls Club staff and appearances by Blanca’s girls, we hope that everyone else will love it too!  The video is so close to being finished, we can’t wait to share it with the world at our premiere party next week! The video will be such a fun and exciting way to open all the new Girls Club sessions to come!

Today in culinary academy, we made a delicious meal of spaghetti and meatballs for our hungry tutoring girls! Will taught us the technique of mixing mild flavors with stronger ones, like spicy and sweet, to make every thing taste better. For dessert, we made yummy walnut cookies!

This week in Photography, the class visited the well-known photography organization Aperture in Chelsea. We got a great tour of the gallery from Schuyler Duffy, an Aperture Work Scholar, who gave us interesting background on the organization, and a walking tour of the current exhibition of work by Martin Parr. The Martin Parr show focuses on his work photographing beach culture around the world. The show explores various themes such as the culture of tourism, consumerism, and man’s relationship with nature. We also learned a little bit about the book publishing industry that is so important for the presentation and dissemination of photography.