HAZLETON — Left hand up, turn to the right; right hand up turn to the left, Cali Solarek said while showing dance steps to children facing her.
When the music started, children followed Solarek through a routine that included hops, claps, arm circles and air guitar during a session of summer camp at Hazleton Integration Project.
While Solarek taught dance on Monday, campers in other rooms drew pictures, practiced interviewing with a radio reporter and decorated cupcakes with soothing images.
The activities are part of art week at HIP’s Hazleton One Community Center where camp runs throughout July. During other weeks, the camp’s themes are Europe, Africa and everyday heroes from local emergency units. In August, HIP will offer two weeks of sports camps.
Campers start each day with breakfast at the center, which serves lunch for any school-age child — in addition to the campers — throughout the summer.
For art week, Solarek arrived with a group from Pennsylvania Theatre of Performing Arts, whose instructors planned to teach singing and acting as the week progressed.
Adam Randis, the theater’s artistic director, said his troupe wasn’t prepping campers to do a performance, just giving them some experiences that they might enjoy.
During improv sessions later in the week, Randis planned to ask the children to be their favorite animal as a zookeeper guesses which creature they portray. In another exercise, children will be passengers on a bus acting out the emotions of the driver.
Children who like the introduction to theater might join a school play and keep going. The theater has a youth academy that on Sept. 5, 6 and 7 will stage “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Jr.,” a musical directed, staged, choreographed and acted by students.
Randis, a college history teacher, joined PTPA after singing in the chorus at the former E.A. Encke Elementary School in West Hazleton, and he’s been with the theater for 24 years.
In an upstairs classroom, Borys Krawczeniuk of WVIA Radio told what he and other journalists do. “We basically ask questions and find out the right answers,” Krawczeniuk said before showing a video as an example in which a high school journalist evaluates a TikTok claim that as permafrost melts, long-frozen “zombie” viruses will endanger people.
The journalist, Rani Chor, now attending Stanford University, found that some viruses in the permafrost were new to science, and one, 30,000-year-old virus could still infect its target, an amoeba, not a human. But Chor also read of one case reported by NPR in 2016 of people and reindeer sickened in Siberia by an outbreak of anthrax that could have been triggered after the remains thawed of reindeer infected decades earlier. She rated the TikTok video mostly legit but added that experts believe there’s no need to panic.
After the video ended, campers interviewed each other about their favorite ice cream flavor, person they admire and something exciting that happened to them — seemingly uncontroversial topics that nevertheless raised a journalistic issue.
“What if someone gives you false information?” one camper asked when he thought the boy he was interviewing gave a fake name.
Krawczeniuk said he would try to find out the boy’s name by asking the boy’s friends.
By the end of the session, the campers wrote articles about the people they interviewed.
“This is very good,” Alissa Swarts, WVIA’s education director, said when looking over the article written by the boy who asked about fake names.
Later in the week, Timothy Novotney, a documentary film maker from WVIA, will show the campers how to make videos.
To end the week, each camper will make a video, podcast or written report on an issue they choose.
Counselors from Pathway to Recovery, a drug counseling and abuse prevention center in Hazleton, demonstrated how art can help people cope with anxiety. Campers decorated paper cupcakes with images that made them feel calm and happy.
In the cafeteria, campers drew pictures modeled after dinosaurs and other images drawn by their instructors, who are high school art students.
Ayendy Hiraldo drew a fire-breathing dinosaur, using red marker for fire.
Jayden Canaan sketched Finn and Jake, characters from a favorite television show, “Adventure Time.”
Ian Alcantara drew a character he named Roger for an anime strip he wants to create.
“They can do whatever they want to draw,” said Alejandro Chirre, a rising senior at Hazleton Area High School, who oversaw the campers. “I like watching all these kids expressing themselves.
Later in the week, Chirre will help the students do chalk art, mold clay and paint.
During his senior year Chirre plans to paint a mural on a wall, adding his art to the work of various artists found throughout the community center.
“I’m conjuring up an idea,” he said. “I want to make something that explains everything about this community.”
