If you’ve ever wondered what archaeologists really do, or what makes an opera tick or what artists draw on for inspiration, you’re about to find out – thanks to workshops this weekend and next.
The following programs supply the materials – all you need to bring is curiosity.
FOLLOW THAT FOSSIL
Dem bones, dem bones, dem crazy bones … they can tell us a lot about where we came from, and may give us hints about where we’re going. And there are lots of lovely bones – animal and human – at the American Museum of Natural History’s new exhibit, “The First Europeans.”
Most of these bones and fossils come from the hills of northern Spain, where railroad workers blasted through a mountain side and revealed a cave full of archaeological riches.
You can see what those cave walls looked like and how the archaeologists’ mapped their discoveries by looking through a clear plastic floor, where tools – brushes, calipers, journals – lay alongside fossils, just as they had when teams of archaeologists were at work.
First, though, you’ll have to pass by a hulking skeleton of a European cave bear on its hind legs, claws raised as if ready to strike.
You’ll also get a glimpse of one of early man’s first tools – an ax made from rose- and orange-colored quartzite. A video shows how it was used to hack up something for dinner.
You’ll even come face to face with “Gran Dolina Boy,” an artist’s re-creation of what an 11-year-old boy from thousands of years ago actually looked like. (Hint: They didn’t wear fades back then.)
Ready to dig? Head for the museum’s Discovery Room, where the reception desk will provide kids with kits containing goggles, a chisel and a brush – the better to “unearth” an Oviraptor nest in a sandbox-sized re-creation of a paleontology field site.You’ll also be able to handle real fossils, including a 400-million-year-old trilobite and a cross-section of a mastodon tusk.
If you’re a museum member, a workshop tomorrow will give you a handle on how archaeologists operate by letting you handle a real wooly mammoth tooth.
What can a tooth tell you? Plenty, says Pamela Popeson, the fossil expert who’ll lead workshops beginning at 10:30 a.m. (for kids 5 to 7) and 1 p.m. (for kids 8-12).Workshops are $25 and meet in the museum’s Rose Center Classroom. For information on becoming a member, call (212) 769-5606.
OPEN YOUR EARS
Opera for all? That’s what the Metropolitan Opera Guild hopes to inspire with its Growing Up With Opera series for kids and their families.
Two programs this weekend, each with young singers and piano accompaniment, will show you what opera’s all about: a mingling of many art forms, including sets, music, acting and singing.
In “Sing Me a Dream,” for kids ages 4 to 6, the Sandman and Tooth Fairy will lead kids on a journey through their dreams.
Along the way, they’ll sing arias, or songs – in English – from the operas “Romeo and Juliet” and “Hansel and Gretel.”
There’ll be two workshops today at 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. and one tomorrow at 3 p.m. Tickets are $7.
“Operation Opera!,” for kids 6 to 12, goes a little further. It kicks off with excerpts from Rossini’s comic opera, “Il Signor Bruschino” – sung in English, and in modern dress.
Then you’re asked to deconstruct it – listening first to the music alone, then the words – to see how an opera becomes more than the sum of its parts.
Tickets for “Operation Opera!” – at 3 p.m. today and 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. tomorrow – are $10. All the workshops meet at the DiCapo Opera Theater at 184 E. 76th St.
EXPRESS YOURSELF
Why are some artists driven to abstraction? Find out at the Jewish Museum’s art workshop next weekend.
The artists in question are Jackson Pollack, Mark Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb – and the museum just happens to have an exhibit devoted to the latter.
Gottlieb was known for the paintings he called “pictographs” – bold, symbolic images like eyes and arrows – before he moved onto abstraction, says Rachel Katz, the artist and editor leading the workshop.
Later his work became more and more abstract.
Kids 6 and older are invited to tour the galleries and make sketches – then sit down to paint pictographs and abstractions of their own.
The workshop meets next Sunday from 2 to 3:30 p.m. and enrollment is limited. Tickets are $8. To register, call (212) 423-3337.
HAIL THAT CAB!
They called him the King of Hi-De-Ho – but the great American bandleader Cab Calloway was more like the first rap star.
He could scat – that is, make up nonsense lyrics – faster than most people could think, and he was all energy, both on the bandstand and off.
Find out more – and learn to scat some yourself – at Lincoln Center’s Reel-to-Real programs this weekend starring someone who knew the King well: his daughter, Chris Calloway.
She’ll join dancer Ted Levy and the All-City La Guardia High School Jazz Band to perform her dad’s music – and that of his older sister, Blanche.
You’ll also catch Cab as he appeared in films like “Porgy and Bess” (he inspired the character Sportin’ Life) and cartoons like Tom and Jerry’s “Zoot Cat.”
Shows are today at 1:30 p.m. at Harlem’s Schomburg Center and tomorrow at 11:30 a.m. and 2 p.m. at Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater. The Harlem show is free; tickets to Lincoln Center shows are $8.50 for kids, $16.50 adults. (See the tipbox for details.)