“The art of dance insists it look easy.”
A packed auditorium of North Colonie fifth-grade students watched Director of Arts Education for Saratoga Performing Arts Center Siobhan Dunham gracefully move across the stage on the tips of her toes, describing how she must keep her head up and have elongated movement with her legs.
Using ballet as one example of dance, Dunham and two other professional dancers spent the morning of Friday, May 3, at Shaker High School with the entire district’s fifth-grade students for the arts education series “Classical Kids.” The school-based program is sponsored by SPAC and Union College, and was created in 1993 to help provide an interactive approach for children to learn about classical music and dance. This year, the program will visit 22 schools in 13 school districts.
This is the 10th year North Colonie has worked with the program, allowing fifth- and sixth-grade students to partake.
“We assume kids get the opportunity through their families (to see performances), but some don’t,” said District Music Supervisor Deborah Keough. “It’s a remarkable opportunity for fifth- and sixth-grade students to see world-class performances.”
After watching the in-school performances this year, the children are invited to come to SPAC in August to see a live performance of the modern dance troupe MOMIX, presenting “Botanica,” a mix of dance, theater and cinema. If the students attend the August performance, they will receive two SPAC season lawn passes every year for classical performances that they can use until they graduate high school.
With the launch of the 2013 season, this year’s “Classical Kids” has introduced more contemporary forms of dance along with ballet, and added a multimedia component for classical music presentations. The new program offers classical ballet, jazz, tap, modern and hip-hop styles of dance.
“The changes are designed to make the experience more interactive, relevant and accessible for kids. The more engaged they are, the greater the likelihood that they will continue to explore and appreciate the arts as they grow up, which is the ultimate goal,” SPAC’s President and Executive Director Marcia J. White said in a statement.
During Friday’s performance, Dunham and two dancers, Emily Lnenicka and Union College dance instructor Marcus Rogers, performed for the students and discussed the differences between conventional dance forms like jazz, hip-hop and ballet.
“Each dance move has its own challenge,” Dunham said. “Dance is an evolving art form. All dancers need to draw and take from each different movement.”
While ballet may evoke more aristocratic and elegant movements, jazz was described as “sultry” and hip-hop as “bouncy.”
Another segment of the new program is active participation. The three dancers invited 30 students on stage with them, separating them into three groups to learn a short jazz, hip-hop or ballet dance. Two male students also learned how to help a female dancer on a promenade, in which a male dancer guides a female dancer as she walks around him.
“It was really cool. I liked how you could participate,” Southgate Elementary School student James Thompson said after watching the performance.
Dunham also expressed how male dancers are sometimes underrated, even though they lift the female dancers, add extra turns in her dance or “make her look great.”
“Male dancers in many ways are an unsung hero,” Dunham said.
After the performance, students asked the dancers questions, including asking Rogers if he had played sports in the past. He said he played football and baseball but they were “too easy” and decided to dance instead.
“It was really amazing to see how good they were and to see how naturally it came to them,” Southgate Elementary School student Isabella Provost said.
Provost’s classmate Chloe Baldwin agreed.
“I think it went really great and I want to see it again,” she said.