What We Do
The Instrument Petting Zoo Project (IPZP) team is convinced that music is a powerful tool for personal as well as community development. Both solo and ensemble music-making as well as dance have the potential to enhance introspective efforts as an aid in emotional processing. Ensemble music and social dancing both have a special potential for bonding, allowing people to build trust whether they have just met or have had a long and complicated history together.
Having grown up making music & dancing (awkwardly yet freely) with their family, IPZP Founder Nora Maynard sees the deepest purpose of music as socially bonding, rather than performative or competitive. Most of the live music one hears takes place on stages, with a seated audience. This is generally a wonderful celebration of skill and dedication, however…
How incredible would it be if there were more spaces with less of a barrier of entry to playing instruments with other people, and more social ease in physically expressing the ways that it can inspire us to move our bodies?
The IPZP team envisions cultivating such an environment, one where people will feel empowered to pick up an instrument or lend their voice to a group of music-makers who are conversing thru sound. Meanwhile, people nearby are dancing in an improvised, semi-choreographed, or performative manner. Others surely would be in the same space experiencing stillness, sinking into whatever feelings they happen to be processing at that time, but not obligated to sit silently.
Music has such potential for collaborative community engagement, harnessing both sound and movement.
To this end, we are recreating in a visually dazzling manner a project that has existed in educational environments for decades; the Instrument Petting Zoo.
This is an educational method for encouraging young students to explore new instruments with some guidance from an experienced musician. Bringing this experience to life for adults is much less common, and even less so with decorated instruments, and even less than that incorporating social dance . Similar to the “Play Me, I’m Yours” project, in which IPZ team members Karyn Alzayer and Pampi also played a part, these instruments will be decorated to generate appeal and approachability for the general public.
Between Karyn, Helen, Eric, and Pampi we have a powerhouse team of lead artists who can help transform approximately 70 instruments and countless kazoos (the latter adoptable by the public) into decorated animalistic instruments as well as create an elaborate habitat in which they can comfortably coexist with the humans who would befriend them. We have a collective of 11 Boston area musicians and music teachers at the WholeTone Music Academy, directed by Nora Maynard, who can offer lessons, performances, and jam sessions to the public. Lastly, we have a team of dancers and somatic expressive artists who can involve the public in dancing, improvised movement exercises, and provide the visual experience of a dance performance when called upon. We will also account for sanitization of the instruments, which we realize will be important in the new social era we are entering. We will look forward to welcoming visiting artists and dance teachers to various iterations of this project!