Musical Books: Dancing Hands – Two Books with the Same Name

Dancing Hands could make you picture different things. A fingerplay. A blacklight hand dance. A person playing an instrument. A person signing to a friend. There are two books with the title Dancing Hands and I thought it would be fun to show how they can both be used in the music classroom as a pair.

Dancing Hands: How Teresa Carreño Played the Piano for President Lincoln

Author: Margarita Engle 
Illustrator: Rafael López 
ISBN: 978-1481487405
Buy the book on Amazon

Dancing Hands is about Teresa Carreño. This book follows her from Venezuela learning the piano, writing her own music, and leaving Venezuela for the United States leaving one place with war to another. The story follows her to being invited to play for Abraham Lincoln.

Dancing Hands: A Story of Friendship in Filipino Sign Language

Author: Joanna Que, Charina Marquez 
Illustrator: Fran Alvarez 
ISBN: 978-1797213323
Buy the book on Amazon

This book is outwardly, not musical. This is about Sam and Mai. The girls are neighbors who cannot communicate because Mai uses Filipino sign language. The book talks about communication difficulties, learning sign language from Mai, and becoming best friends. There are several pages that do not have words.

However, this book is a wonderful way to connect Filipino culture and American culture, discuss how characters in both books faced challenges, what they did to over come them and how trying new things led to exciting things.

Discussion Points

• What does “Dancing Hands” mean to each story?
• What else could be dancing hands?
• How did Sam, Mai, and Teresa deal with challenges? What challenges did they face?
• What barriers did Sam, Mai, and Teresa have to moving on?
• What Sam and Mai do to overcome their challenge?
• What helped Teresa begin to feel at home?

Listening

• A Venezuelan Woman as the World’s Best Pianist: Teresa Carreño https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Qf6OJJ98Pc
• Teresa Carreño plays her Mi Teresita Waltz on original ca. 1908 piano roll https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjZmBRkNNw4&t=4s
• Teresa Carreño plays Chopin Ballade No. 1 in G minor Op. 23 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SCoheEblp0
• Another prodigy, this time from the Philippines, Nicanor Abelardo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BT0FrJmj2YY
• Nicanor Abelardo – Cavatina https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0HlTgu8O8c
  
  

Other Lesson Ideas

• Students create a hand dance to a song. Allowing for only hand use is a great way to meet students who may not be comfortable creating a dance with their whole body. (I would be one of these people).
• Tie with a deeper dive into prodigy musicians.
• Tie with ties between Venezuela, the Philippines and how Spanish colonization affected culture/music in both nations.
• Dive into Venezuelan and Filipino musical traditions.

I hope this gave you a bunch of ideas!