Taking first steps into performing arts with SteppingStone Theatre

When Terrell Woods teaches kids how to beat box, he likes to draw connections to basketball. "You can't play basketball unless you condition the body," he says. "You have to practice to be good at it."

"A lot of people like watching beat boxing but are intimidated," he says. "I try to teach the importance of using the body as an instrument. It's not just using your mouth. That lowers anxiety." He encourages them to think of themselves as drum machines and starts them off clapping, snapping and humming.

Woods and other working professionals and educators are working with St. Paul's SteppingStone Theatre to host a series of performing arts workshops -- on skills including acting, magic, beat boxing and creative movement -- at Dakota County libraries this winter and spring.

Woods, a hip hop/spoken word artist who teaches music production classes to young people and performs under the name "Carnage" (voted "One of top 5 rappers in Minnesota" by the Star Tribune and "Emcee to keep your eye on" by City Pages), says many kids make sound effects constantly, such as when playing with action figures, so beat boxing comes easily for them.

To get them started, he often plays classic songs by artists like the Fat Boys as he teaches kids to break sounds down into their smallest pieces. With young kids, he says he works with "first-level sounds," such as basic high hats and snares -- the most simplistic sounds of drums.

"We were looking for more hands-on, interactive-type programming," says Russ Cogar, the libraries' Community Connections Manager. "Libraries are more than books and technology. They are about arts and culture." This is the Dakota County system's first collaboration with SteppingStone Theatre, he says, and Minnesota Legacy program funding made the workshops possible.

Magician K.C. Braun of Apple Valley says when he teaches the kids a trick like how to push a saltshaker through a table, they love it. "It's super easy to do," he says. "They learn it pretty quickly, and it's a very powerful effect. It just shocks the people in front of them."

"When I'm showing them, I'm teaching them how to present a trick," he says. "I'm trying to get them to think like a magician, too."

"You definitely build hand-eye coordination," he says. "It builds confidence, self-esteem. It starts to introduce you to interacting in front of people."

Woods says that he's always been shy, but beat boxing was a way for him to connect with people. "People like you when you beat box," he says. "I've been complimented by 80-year-olds who say 'You're amazing.'" It's also a great self-esteem builder, he says. "You have to take chances and take risks," he says. "You have to be willing to be the freak, the different one."

In other classes such as creative movement, kids focus on skills including rhythm, body control, flexibility, concentration and coordination. "They don't realize they are learning," says SteppingStone Education Program Associate Nikki Anthony.

Woods says he is often inspired by what the kids produce. He likes to make CDs for them, and in the past, he has even taken the sounds the kids produce and used them in interludes when he's performing.