NTID Theatre History: Leaves of the Poetry Tree: February 2019

The collection of interpretive dances based on children’s prose and poetry, "Leaves of the Poetry Tree," was featured in a new production by the National Technical Institute for the Deaf’s Performing Arts department at Rochester Institute of Technology.

Leaves of the Poetry Tree combined music, American Sign Language (ASL), and poetry with dance, and featured a variety of styles including tap, ballet, modern/contemporary, hip-hop, and jazz. Using inspiration found in children’s stories and poetry books, the family-friendly dance production addressed issues and challenges such as bullying, fear, death, racial differences, gender identity, and equality. Deaf, hard-of-hearing, and hearing performers took the stage together, joined by young dancers from area public schools.

The show was directed by dancer, actor, and NTID alumna and staff member Nicole Marie Cruz, and featured set design by Erin Auble, costume design by Danica Zielinski, sound and projection by Dan Roach, and lighting by Nic Minetor.

“Leaves of the Poetry Tree was a production where poems came to life through dance,” Cruz explained. She cited Shel Silverstein's well-known children's book, The Giving Tree, as an inspiration that helped the audience understand the joy of giving and receiving. “I became inspired by the book when I recently reread it and I believed that children could connect poems to dance better visually, especially Deaf children. I myself would have learned the concept of poetry better if I saw dancing according to the poem. When you read poems, you get the sense of theme, mood, and the flow of each word; we the Deaf people understood theme, mood, and the flow better when we saw the movements through body, facial expressions, and felt the music.”

She concluded, “In this production, you got the sense of being in a book where words came to life through the dancers. You got the sense of wonder like a child does. [The audience] let their inner child come out by laughing, crying, wondering, and dreaming. [They] let their inner child roam freely in our small world on stage, designed beautifully by Erin Auble!”