4 ways to go to school while dancing

Dance Magazine, Oct, 1996 by Peter Boal, Muriel Topaz, Caitlin Sims, Veronica Dittman

ACADEMIC TRAINING AT THE PROFESSIONAL CHILDREN'S SCHOOL

What do Darci Kistler and Uma Thurman have in common? How about Ethan Stiefel end Yo-Yo Ma? All are famous in their fields, all achieved success at a young age, and all went to the same academic school.

For the past eighty-two years, New York City's Professional Children's School (PCS) has provided an academic education for students who are unable to attend regular schools because of the demands of their profession. In recent years PCS classes have included models, actors, singers, dancers, musicians, athletes, an international chess champion, a sculptor, a vice-president of marketing for a major toy manufacturer, and a trapeze artist. Though their professions differ, these gifted students share a common bond; they have little time for school.

In 1914, the story goes, the daughter of a bishop and the deaconess of a small church attended a matinee performance of Daddy Long Legs. During a visit backstage after the show, the two women noticed a group of children playing cards for money. The deaconess asked one of the boys, "Why aren't you in school, young man?" The boy replied, "Because it's a matinee day, lady!" As a response to the boy's "explanation," the two women founded the Professional Children's School and saw to it that the sassy little performer was its first student. Within two years the school had more than one hundred students.

PCS currently enrolls two hundred students in grades four through twelve. Students have come to PCS from seven countries and twenty states. About one-third of the students are dancers.

Located on West 60th Street in Manhattan, the school is just a short walk from the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center and the School of American Ballet (SAB). At SAB, advanced students begin their first ballet class at 10:30 A.M. Afternoons are filled with variations, pas de deux, and pointe classes, as well as rehearsals. Academics must be arranged around the demanding ballet schedule.

Most ballet students are able to attend three or four academic classes at PCS each day. If a student is unable to attend a required class, he or she is responsible for meeting privately with the teacher. Instructors at PCS teach four scheduled classes a week, one less than at most other schools, in order to allow them time for individual meetings with students who must miss classes. In these meetings, both classwork and homework are assigned and reviewed; students then complete the work on their own.

Like Jennifer Chipman, some ballet students become professionals even before completing their high school education. Jennifer was selected from SAB to join New York City Ballet just after her sixteenth birthday. Her new job required her to work from 10:30 A.M. until 10:30 P.M. with two hours of free time each day. Those two hours were spent reading Dostoyevski for her English class or working on her senior research paper about Sir Walter Raleigh and the Tower of London. (A New York City Ballet tour to Europe allowed her to do some on-site research.) Aside from an occasional morning meeting with a teacher, she only attended PCS on Mondays. Still, she maintained an A average and graduated from PCS last June. Like many dancers of her generation, Jennifer applied to colleges; she was accepted by both New York University and Fordham University. Though she has no plans to stop dancing in the near future, an injury made her aware that the professional life of a dancer is uncertain.

Because injuries can end careers when they have just begun, PCS encourages all of its graduates, no matter how certain their futures seem, to apply to colleges. If they are accepted, admission can often be deferred.

Lillie Stewart joined American Ballet Theatre during her senior year at PCS. Her ballet career seemed assured; however, during her third year with the company she slipped a disk in her neck, leaving her virtually paralyzed. "My entire life had been built around my identity as a dancer," explains Lillie, "and suddenly the floor dropped out from under me." She recovered from the injury to dance again, but a relapse ended Lillie's dance career for good. Three years after leaving PCS, she returned to speak with her adviser about applying to college; Lillie is now a graduate of Columbia University.

Even though she was already a member of New York City Ballet, Tanya Gingrich was urged by her PCS adviser to apply to colleges during her senior year. She deferred acceptances to Princeton and Yale to pursue her dance career. After two and one-half years with the ballet company, Tanya felt something was missing. She was raised in a family of academics and had inherited from them both the value of and a gift for learning. She decided to leave ballet for Yale. Tanya has now graduated with a double major in English literature and theater.

While accommodating the busy schedules of its students, PCS never sacrifices its educational standards. The curriculum includes courses such as physics, calculus, and constitutional law. French classes are taught entirely in French, with readings ranging from Voltaire to Sartre. Every year the school boasts an impressive list of students accepted to prestigious universities, and last year two seniors earned perfect scores on their SATs. One was selected both as a National Merit Scholar and as a Presidential Scholar.