ACTIVITIES TYPICAL DAYS
A typical day during rehearsals:
During the first three weeks, when Hopers™ are in rehearsals, your day starts with a buffet breakfast. There’s no reveille, no wake-up bells. You can get up really early if you’re a morning person or you can sleep a bit later, so long as you get to rehearsal on time, washed and fed!
You start with a vocal rehearsal led by one of our lively and talented vocal directors carefully selected for the current year's program. You learn songs from countries all over the world. You learn cool medleys of rock & roll, rap, jazz, blues, traditional folk, and reggae. In dance rehearsals after lunch, you start putting movements and dances to songs. You begin learning how to be a more energetic and more dynamic performer. You will learn to perform to rhythms from many countries. Rehearsals are all about getting the concert ready for tour! After rehearsals, there’s dinner followed by more free time and fun activities and games. You might learn a cool game
from one of your new African or Asian
friends. You might draw and share images of your countries with other Hopers™. You might watch a DVD of a past Songs of Hope™ concert for artistic inspiration.
A typical day during touring:
When rehearsals are over and Songs of Hope™ goes on tour, the days change. There’s now more time for play and fun. When we're performing near home, you'll have all kinds of outings and activities. When Songs of Hope™ tours overnight, you might perform some small concerts in local nursing homes and your full-length public concerts in city parks. You might go swimming in a city pool or a local lake. You might go hiking in a nearby National Park, and so much more!
If you love singing and performing, you’ll love the typical activities of a Songs of Hope™ day because virtually every day has some form of art in it. There are two halves to Songs of Hope™, the 3-week rehearsal period and the 3-week performance period.
CULTURAL LEARNING
Songs of Hope™ participants enjoy a wide range of activities selected to entertain, educate, stimulate, and challenge. The project is justly famous for our unique and popular Getting-To-Know-You™ (GTKY™) sessions. There's no typical GTKY™. One night, you might find yourself sitting with all the first-year Hopers™ in front of a giant pile of candies from countries worldwide. Taking turns with the other kids, you close your eyes, reach in, take a candy, unwrap it, pop it in your mouth, and then try to guess the country of origin. Sweet but spicy and hot? Does that mean Mexico? Or is that just a stereotype of Mexican food? On another day, your roommates and you might be challenged to invent a short play based on a folk tale from one of your roommates’ countries and then present it to the other kids. On another night, the GTKY™ might be an inventive game looking at some causes of cultural differences. On another night, there's a wild and crazy cultural scavenger hunt.
TRAVEL EVENTS
&
Songs of Hope™ enjoys the benefit of being located in the middle of a large, culturally vibrant metropolitan area. Songs of Hope™ participants have many chances to take advantage of different offerings in the Minneapolis/Saint Paul area.
Each summer's project includes offerings like:
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The world-famous Science Museum of Minnesota
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Minneapolis Sculpture Garden
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The Walker Art Center
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The Minneapolis Institute of Arts
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The Guthrie Theatre
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The Minnesota History Center
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Cathedral of St. Paul
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Minnesota Capital Building
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Prairie Island Mdewakanton Sioux
Pow-wow
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Dragon Boat Festival
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Uptown Art Festival
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Shakespeare in the Park series
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Minnesota Center for Book Arts
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University of Minnesota Raptor Center
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Como Zoo
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The Minnesota Zoo
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The Minnesota Museum of American Art
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Lark Toy Store
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The National Eagle Center
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Minnesota Twins professional baseball game
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Minnesota Thunder professional soccer
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The Weisman Art Museum (University of Minnesota)
and many others!
REHEARSAL
PERFORMANCE
&
Getting the concert ready involves vocal rehearsals, dance sessions, international rehearsals, and many other forms of rehearsal and performance learning.
The performances include:​
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Full Concerts
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Smaller Arts-In-Service Performances
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Concerts for Special Audiences
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School Concerts
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Music Workshops