Lucy Lopez by Claudia Mills

Author:Claudia Mills [Mills, Claudia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Holiday House
Published: 2020-10-06T00:00:00+00:00

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Week two of coding camp began with a presentation from a guest speaker who used coding to make special light and sound effects for a local dance company. She looked exactly the way Lucy expected a dancer to look: tall and slim, with her hair pulled back tightly from her face in a non-messy bun. The video she showed was amazing. Lucy hadn’t known coding could be used for real-life dances by human beings, not just animated dances by cartoon creatures.

After the presentation, Preston said this would be the week for dance choreography. Choreography meant telling dancers the sequence of steps and movements to perform.

This would be the week Lucy learned how to make her own dances for her own hipping-hopping kangaroo!

“Let’s code a dance right now, in our room,” Pippa said. She and Preston liked what they called “unplugged” activities, where you learned about coding without even using a computer. Lucy thought those activities were fun, too.

Pippa turned on some music with a catchy beat, at a volume low enough that she could speak over it.

“First, let’s make a list of possible moves to include in our dance.”

What would count as a dance move? Lucy tried to remember what steps Elena’s kangaroo and hedgehog had done, but she didn’t know the names of any of them.

The other kids seemed baffled, too, even Nolan. So Pippa demonstrated a few: a clap high, a dab, a floss, and a funny one called Gangnam.

“Now let’s put them in an algorithm,” Pippa said. “Let’s decide which order to do them in—and how long to do each one. Two measures? Four measures? Six?”

Pippa counted out the beats of the music. “One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four.” She explained that each “one two three four” was a measure, and that she’d just counted out three measures.

After ten more minutes of demonstration, Pippa had the sequence of dance motions written on the classroom Smart Board with the number of measures, chosen by the campers, next to each one.

“And we’ll just keep on following this choreography code, in a loop, till the music ends. Get it?” Pippa asked.

Everyone nodded.

Pippa cranked up the volume on the music. “So now let’s dance it!”

Lucy tried doing the dance, following Pippa’s example, but the movements changed too quickly. One, two, three, four; one, two, three, four; one, two, three, four; one, two, three, four went by so fast when you were trying to do a clap high while it happened. Dancing clearly wasn’t going to turn out to be her best thing. It was more fun just to watch everyone else.

Nolan was good at remembering the motions for each dance move. But the serious expression on his face was such a contrast to the silliness of the motions, it made Lucy want to laugh.

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