The moment the Ballet West for Children assembly ended at Lomond View Elementary in Pleasant View, Utah, students could be seen twirling, leaping, and spinning across the playground during recess.
“It was wonderful to see students rush outside and immediately start mimicking the dance moves they had just seen,” wrote Principal Nanette Watson after the program at her school. “The amount of information you and your dancers managed to rehearse and seamlessly pack into a 50-minute presentation was truly remarkable. Every moment was engaging, educational, and beautifully executed.”
Where Discovery Begins
These moments of discovery and joy happen throughout the year as Ballet West shares dance with students, teachers, and community members across Utah through its Community and Education Outreach programs. For many children, these performances represent their first, and sometimes only, opportunity to experience live ballet.
“In my class, only one student had ever been to the theater or seen the ballet,” shared teacher Andrea Hansen-Davidson after bringing her students to see The Dream, at one of Ballet West’s In-Theatre Presentations at the Janet Quinney Lawson Capitol Theatre
Another educator, Esther Marsden, noted, “This demographic of students would never have access due to the limited funding for the arts and limited availability for the arts. They all were trying to jump and dance like the dancers and realized how difficult it is even though it looked easy,” she explained.
During the same performance of The Dream, teacher Peter Haslam was struck by, “...how engaged the students were and how they kept whispering to each other about what was going on in the performance.”
Opening Doors With Each Performance
Teacher Kimberly Loose recalled having “...students who were upset when they learned our field trip was to the ballet, who then told me how much fun it was. I had a student who told me he loved to read Shakespeare, a child who had never heard of Shakespeare prior to preparing for the ballet.”
Perhaps one second-grade class from Salt Lake School District said it best: “We like ballet more now and would love to learn how to do it!
Through these outreach programs, Ballet West reached over 152,000 students, teachers, and community members throughout Utah last year, opening doors to the transformative power of dance, one performance at a time.
Visit balletwest.org/education to learn more.