



Kids These Days

August 26 & 27 @ 7pm
Lincoln Performing Arts School - Blackbox Theatre
Artistic Director
Amberly M. Simpson
Associate and Technical Director
Joseph R. Brandt
Ambo Dance Theatre proud to elevate the voices of our Junior Company and Apprentice dancers in Kids These Days, an evening-length collection of dance works reflecting the experiences of the youth of today. Too often the phrase “kids these days” is used to refer to 21st century youth in a derogatory manner, often alluding to how easy young people have it now in comparison to older generations. This show directly addresses the unique challenges of today’s youth, from their perspective, and devised collaboratively by the dancers, allowing them to tackle issues of body image, mental health, identity, social media, school culture, and so much more!
Funding for Kids These Days was graciously provided by the Kentucky Foundation for Women through their Art Meets Activism grant!
Program Duration:
1 hour, 15 minutes of choreography
15 minute talk back with the dancers
There will be no intermission during this production.
Kids These Days in the News:
‘Kids These Days’ dance work shows teens in their own perspectives
by Stephanie Wolf





Show Order
Opening
Music: “The Kids Are Coming” by Tones And I
Choreography: Amberly M. Simpson and the Dancers
Mental Health
Music: “April" by Kai Engel; "Straight Towards the Sun" by John Bartmann
Ensemble Choreography: Amberly M. Simpson in collaboration with the Dancers
Solo/Duet/Choreography: the Dancers
Soloist: Madalyn Durst
Duet: Mia Henry, Ava Lyons
Content Warnings: This section of the show contains portrayals of a variety of mental health experiences relating primarily to depressive and anxiety disorders.
External Identity: Presentation
Music: "Gentle Rain" by John Bartmann
Choreography and Soloists (in order of appearance): Helena Smith-Pohl, Eszti Krizsan, Aila Kolehmainen
Staging: Amberly M. Simpson
The School Experience: Social Dynamics
PART ONE: Shifting Social Spheres
Music: "5 115" by Michael Wall
Sound Effects: School Bell
Choreography: Amberly M. Simpson in collaboration with the Dancers
PART TWO: Bullying
Music: "Assignment 1", "Chi11", and "Gaia" by Drake Stafford
Choreography: Rylan Cole, Madalyn Durst, Carly Hay, Ellie Lindy, Ava Lyons
Soloist: Rylan Cole
Content Warning: This section of the show contains portrayals of a variety of experiences pertaining to bullying.
PART THREE: Social Media
Music: "Synthetic Epiphany - Anticipate" by Dank 'N' Dirty Dubz
Choreography: Alyssa Ernst, Lydia French, Mia Henry, Aila Kolehmainen, Eszti Krizsan, Helena Smith-Pohl
Soloist: Lydia French
Content Warning: The section of the show also contains portrayals of bullying as it relates to the digital social world. This is, however, not the sole commentary presented on youth's relationship with social media.
The School Experience: American School Culture
PART ONE: "Neither Distract, Nor Disrupt" (2021) - The Dress Code Dance
Music: “Rust Colony” by ROZKOL; "Relent" by Kevin MacLeod
Lecture Source Audio: Alan Watts
Voice-overs: Zachary Haley, Amberly M. Simpson, Joe Welsh
Content Warning: This section of the show contains statements and portrayals pertaining to the appearance of the female body, and how it is frequently handled under school dress code policies, as well as on a broader societal level.
Program Note: This dance was originally created on/by Ambo Dance Theatre's Apprentices in the summer of 2021 as part of their joint show with the Professional Company, Imprint. All of the outfits featured in this section were outfits in which the dancers were dress coded. All of the statements made by the dancers were statements they heard made by adults in the context of dress code disciplinary action.
PART TWO: Over-Testing, Over-Sitting, Over-Pressured
Music: "Rosas danst rosas" by tweede beweging
Choreography: Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker
Staging: Amberly M. Simpson
Program Note: This dance was created as part of the Rosas Remix Project! To learn more about this initiative, click here!
PART THREE: ALICE Drill
Music: "Get in the Car" by Travis Lake
Voice-overs: Braden McCampbell
Sound Effect: Alarm
Choreography: Amberly M. Simpson
Content Warning: The section of the show contains portrayals of the training process for active shooter and intruder situations in schools. This dance is situated in the context of a drill, not an active threat situation, and represents the procedures associated with ALICE: alert, lockdown, inform, counter, evacuate.
Please note that this section begins with an alarm sound effect. There is no active threat present when you hear this sound effect. In the event of an actual emergency, all lights in the theatre will come on and an announcement will be made.
PART FOUR: The Assembly Line Complex
Music: "Eleven" by yMusic & Ryan Lott
Staging: Amberly M. Simpson
Internal Identity: The Things We Carry
PART ONE: LGBTQ+ Identity and Allyship
Music: "Salue" and "Headway" by Kai Engel
Voice-overs: Alyssa Ernst, Carly Hay, Helena Smith-Pohl, Scout Tarquinio
Choreography: The Dancers under the guidance of Amberly M. Simpson
PART TWO: BIPOC Identity
Music: "Stereotypes" by Black Violin; "It Was Another Time" by John Bartmann
Voice-overs: Rylan Cole, Ellie Lindy, Sofia Ritchie, Arie Washington
Choreography: Heather Moran in collaboration with the Dancers
PART THREE: Family Identity and Relationships
Music: "Great Expectations" by Kai Engel
Choreography and Soloist: Carly Hay
Staging: Amberly M. Simpson
Mental Health Reprise: Mutual Support
Music: "July" by Kai Engel; "HeavensDust2" by Michael Wall
Ensemble Choreography/Scoring: Amberly M. Simpson
Pas de Quatre Choreography: Madalyn Durst, Mia Henry, Eszti Krizsan, Ava Lyons
FIN
Thank you for sharing this experience with us!
Thank you for working to empower the rising generation!




The Cast
Kids These Days features performers from Ambo Dance Theatre's Junior Company and Apprentice pre-professional track companies. Dancers are listed in alphabetical order by last name.
Rylan Cole
Allesandra Day
Madalyn Durst
Alyssa Ernst
Lydia French
Carly Hay
Mia Henry
Gillian Jarett
Aila Kolehmainen
Eszti Krizsan
Ellie Lindy
Ava Lyons
Vivian Ortego
Izzy Parks
Sofia Ritchie
Helena Smith-Pohl
Scout Tarquinio
Arie Washington
The Creative Team
Artistic Director and Choreographer
Amberly M. Simpson
Featured Choreographers
Heather Moran
***all choreography is created and developed in collaboration with the dancers!***
Lighting Design
Lindsay Krupski
Sound Design
Joseph R. Brandt
Amberly M. Simpson
Sound Operator, Prop Design
Joseph R. Brandt
Special Thanks
The Kentucky Foundation for Women
Stephanie Wolf and WFPL
Lincoln Performing Arts School
Melissa Case
Amos Hopkins
Rachel Bucio Grote
Typh Hainer-Merwarth
Heather Moran
All our donors and sponsors who continue to help us make pre-professional dance training and performance opportunities available to our dancers!




A Note From the Artistic Director
It didn't strike me until we actually got into the theatre and started running the show in dress and tech just how ambitious of a production Kids These Days was. I forget sometimes that our dancers are only teenagers; the work that they produce, the conversations that they hold, the maturity they bring to the table is so far beyond their years. If it wasn't, I don't know that I could have even conceived this idea in the first place, let alone given it any sort of legitimacy enough to move forward with it and bring it to the dancers. Most dancers never have the opportunity to perform an evening-length work in their entire careers, let alone as youth performing artists. I will forever stand behind the phrase that young people can absolutely be full fledged artists, and these dancers are most certainly proof of that.
The exploration that would eventually become Kids These Days all began with the 'dress code dance' (whose actual title is "Neither Distract, Nor Disrupt", language that we took directly from my school's dress code policy) in the late spring of 2021. This wasn't initially a dance that we had on our docket, but it was interesting (and concerning) to me how the same conversations kept coming up around the dancers' bodies, almost all of which connected back to experiences they had with their school's dress code. More specifically, they connected to how people enforced the dress code. This dance alone, frankly, is gut-wrenching, but as the performance came and passed and these sorts of conversations continued to crop up over and over and over again, it was clear that things weren't over for this piece. Indeed, it was starting to feel like more and more of a microcosm of something larger as the discourse we had in passing during rehearsals and classes became more nuanced.
Really and truly, the idea to create Kids These Days came from our youth pre-professional dancers and I simply working together, as well as from my work with middle-school age dancers in JCPS. The privilege that both of these positions has offered is longitudinal observation; where most teachers primarily work with students for a single year, my students work with me for three. As such, I've watched over the years as bright-eyed 6th graders excited to learn started to focus their attention on their bodies, driven by an increasing barrage of comments from their teachers in enforcement of the dress code. I've watched as students had their worlds flipped upside down and inside out from bullying, both in person and digitally, neither world offering an escape. I've watched as students who once loved the joy and process of learning shift their focus increasingly toward their scores and performance on standardized tests. I've watched as students discover their identities and experience the cognitive dissonance of simultaneous liberation in themselves contrasted against a landscape of challenges: will their family, peers, and teachers accept them as they are, or will they need to continue to straddle the line between being in and out of the metaphorical closet? And I've watched young people struggle with their mental health through all of these things and more, often putting their own well-being on the back burner in favor of upholding various obligations, while also carrying the weight of people all around them labeling them as lazy, entitled, superficial, disloyal to work spaces, and and so many other things. Those three years that I get with my students continuously gives me a unique inside glimpse into teenage coming of age where students learn how to carry all these mixed messages and pressures, and if one thing has been crystal clear, it is that modern teenhood is certainly not easy, nor better than it was "before". It just has different challenges, challenges that can often be easily dismissed or denied altogether because they don't always exist in the physical world, or aren't straightforward.
Several people have asked me what the call to action is for this show. Simply put, there isn't one. At the end of the day, I know that not everyone is going to agree on the legitimacy of the experiences presented in Kids These Days. I don't know that this show was, at its core, necessarily built for the audience to experience viewing, so much as it was built for our young people to have a place to share and feel a sense of legitimacy in their voice. A space for their truth to exist. They are, after all, the experts on their own experiences; my teenhood was only a decade ago, and even I must admit that I am now too removed to be able to claim any sort of authority or true personal understanding of the subject matter of this show. Alas, right before my eyes (and without my permission), the world changed, and, with it, so did my understanding of, and connection to, the coming of age experience. The viewing of this work, therefore, becomes the privilege and responsibility of us, the viewers. So, ultimately, while there is no call to action to be found here, what I do hope is that people walk away with an enriched sense of empathy.
Yours truly,
Amberly M. Simpson
Artistic Director