Empowerment through artistic excellence - professional performances for school children - Education & Outreach, Part II

Dance Magazine, Jan, 1996 by Camille Hardy

Cynthia Gregory, a beloved former principal with ABT, led the first of another new public series in November. Billed as master classes, these events feature company dancers and choreographers in working sessions that demonstrate insider knowledge of particular roles and ballet sequences. Kaiser, who came on board in August, is convinced that enhancing the audience's perception of dance is "a year-round occupation that we must address. Our concern is not so much with the number of these opportunities as with the quality of each encounter." Along with continuing conversations between ABT and its many publics, he is also exploring the possibilities of performing in an array of different places. Led by the vision of artistic director Kevin McKenzie, American Ballet Theatre has already achieved enviable performance standards. Repeating that achievement in less traditional arenas is its current objective.

Since 1982, the Joyce Theater Foundation, Inc., has enjoyed an extraordinary record of success with a widely diverse community of dance audiences. The theater itself, a 472-seat house in Manhattan's Chelsea district, now hosts a range of outreach activities unmatched in New York City. In the course of a year programs range from avant-garde and classical to ethnic styles; works by master and emerging choreographers have been performed by domestic and international ensembles. "Our aim is to reach everyone out there," attests Linda Shelton, executive director of the foundation. For her, education has been a priority from the beginning. In the early years, twenty-eight public schools-with students ranging in age from kindergartners through high school seniors - collaborated with the Joyce on a program called the Arts in General Education Network. (The JDR Ill Fund, which was founded by John D. Rockefeller III, had funded AGE Network.)

To continue its commitment to reach young students, the foundation's board of directors created a full-time position last spring when it hired Joanne Robinson Hill as administrator of its Education Program. "While we are constantly exploring additional options," Hill says, "our outreach presently incorporates three components." Some forty schools are involved with Performances for Study, a series of fully produced concerts held Thursdays at noon where students can meet artists whose work they have been studying and assess issues of dance aesthetics and creative concerns. This year five workshops are to be held for teachers, principals, and administrators to orient them to the opportunities of the coming season.

The foundation has also identified four mentor schools - Hill's "buddy system" - that have special abilities for incorporating dance into their curriculum and can help others do the same. Pierre Dulaine and the American Ballroom Theater participated in 1994. Dulaine wanted youngsters who were willing to risk taking class with a partner of the opposite sex. Hill located a neighborhood school that had no dance instructor but did have an administrator who was eager for his students to be exposed to the art form.