Posts Tagged ‘Heather Wisner’

Oregon Ballet Theatre gives art students a new way of looking at the body—and an appreciation for ballet

By Heather Wisner

It is bitterly cold outside Portland’s Keller Auditorium, and not much warmer inside, one Wednesday morning in December as Oregon Ballet Theatre’s dancers file onstage for company class. Everyone is bundled up in hoodies and track pants; Raychel Weiner even wears bright blue gloves as she grips the barre and begins warming up. Out in the audience, art students from St. Mary’s Academy begin warming up as well, rubbing their hands together and blowing on them, breaking out oil pastels and colored pencils, arranging sketch paper, and adjusting tripods and light readings on digital cameras.

The students have come for OBT’s Photo/Art Encounter, a quarterly program that brings art students and dancers together. OBT initiated the program in 1994; every year since then, groups of high school and college students have snapped shots and created sketches of the dancers at work. Each June, the company displays the work in the Keller’s lobby during the last program of the season.

Canby High School student Ashley Saucedo took this photo of Oregon Ballet Theatre principal dancers Ronnie Underwood and Kathi Martuza.

Before this session begins, Emily Russell, OBT’s executive board and community projects manager, explains the ground rules: no food or drink in the auditorium, and excess baggage (backpacks, coats, etc.) should be left in the lobby to increase overall mobility. Students may stand to the sides of the stage to work, or near the edge of the orchestra pit, but they cannot touch the stage. Above all, they’re not allowed to use flash photography, which can distract the dancers as they move. Russell also encourages the photographers to save some film for the showier steps that will come at the end of class.

As OBT school director Damara Bennett demonstrates combinations, movement and concentration heighten on both sides of the stage; students jockey for better sightlines as the dancers begin crossing the floor. The rehearsal pianist plunks away as pencils scratch against paper and shutters whir and beep.

Once the hour-and-a-half class ends, everyone returns to business as usual. The students head back to school to start working on their pieces and the dancers begin a Nutcracker tech rehearsal. But in that brief time, the students have sharpened their abilities to capture bodies in motion, while the company has gained community exposure. The program was designed to be mutually beneficial, and participants say it is. In fact, it could serve as a model for other studios elsewhere.

Getting started
Kasandra Gruener, OBT’s director of education and outreach, says the program was developed by outreach colleague Sandra Baldwin. “She had this idea that it would be really great for artists, because they would be interested in the arts, so they just started it up,” Gruener says. There have been adjustments over time: dancers used to model for students at the schools until OBT scheduling demands and school budget cuts made that impractical. Since the program has been at the Keller, as many as 60 students at a time have participated, although funding became an issue again recently as cash-strapped local schools trimmed field trips from their budgets, leaving no takers for the October session. And students used to do their work onstage until safety concerns dictated that they remain in the audience. 

Overall, however, Gruener says the program has been a relatively easy and cost-effective way to promote the company. “It’s not very expensive—it’s just a matter of spending some time to figure out who in our community we should reach out to, who are the department heads, and then contacting them,” she says.

Over the years, OBT has sent flyers, brochures, or postcards to the schools, although, Gruener cautions, not-for-profits “have to go through certain hoops to send things to schools. In some communities, you can contact the superintendent about sending information to schools. And if you can have personal conversations with art teachers, the word gets out. You have to find out the appropriate way to tell schools that you have a program that benefits them.”

OBT also directs potential participants to its website, which lists the program as an ongoing event. The company doesn’t limit itself to young artists, either—adult art students from continuing education classes are also welcome, as are professionals, although the encounter is meant to be an academic exercise. Participants are admitted at the stage door, so the company doesn’t need to hire people to work the front of the house. And a staffer is always present to explain the rules, facilitate the process, and collect $2 from each participant.

Art students jockey for better sightlines as the dancers begin crossing the floor. The rehearsal pianist plunks away as pencils scratch against paper and shutters whir and beep.

Beyond the nominal fee, the event helps the company attract the attention of potential dance students and dancegoers. “It helps people understand dance—it’s another way to do that,” Gruener says. “Also, people who are in our donor base appreciate that we are encouraging young people’s involvement in art. As education struggles to keep the arts in front of kids’ faces, this is one way to keep young individuals interested in dance, in ballet.” 
 
The arts intersect
“I like ballet myself, and have season tickets,” says Kathy Mitchell, the art teacher at all-girls St. Mary’s who has been bringing her drawing and photography students to the encounter for the last five years, ever since she heard about it from colleagues. “The fact that we’re located downtown makes that a really doable thing. We can walk there.” 

Mitchell believes that trying to capture athletic bodies at work is a good exercise for her students, and says the gradually accelerating pace of the class helps them learn to anticipate movement. “The challenge is to try to capture something that’s going by so fast,” she says. “With photography, you have to keep shooting to see what you can get. Then there’s the challenge of proportions and making them convincing. They have the option of abstracting and how much to go in that direction. Some students have really made it very abstract.

“To me, it’s a wonderful challenge to young artists to see what they’ll do with that and what medium they’ll choose to do it in,” she continues. “I feel like there’s a more lively, invested energy in the drawings because they’re trying to capture that fleeting moment. The more they are excited by the dancers, the subject they’re working with, the more invested they are in making it a good drawing or photo.”

After the December session, participating students admitted to struggling with dim lighting and fast motion but seemed philosophical about the learning curve they faced. Emily Cronin, who arrived armed with Sharpie, colored pastel, and graphite pencil, felt there wasn’t enough paper or time to capture everything she liked. “It was hard to focus on just one pose for more than a few seconds,” she says. “I will probably do my final piece in pastel or acrylic paint—something loose and easy to make big lines with.” 

Classmate Sophie Serber said her biggest challenge was to capture whole poses accurately in a short time. She wound up working with segments of movement to capture the feeling of the movement as a whole.

Each artist trained her eyes on different aspects of the process. Fiona Baker, already a veteran of one OBT encounter, looked less for movement than for dancers’ interactions with one another this time around while she was shooting with a digital camera. “Two years ago when I attended the encounter, I managed to get some great shots of them casually talking [while they were] stretching,” she says. “I found these shots to be more striking than poses. I also tried to find the moments where their faces expressed how much love they have for dance. I am a dancer as well and I wanted to capture their movements of joy.” 

The encounter has been educational on the other side of the stage: OBT soloist Candace Bouchard says the process tends to change the way dancers approach class. “You suddenly have an audience; it makes you more aware of positions, how your feet look,” she says. “I have seen some of the photos they’ve taken, and sometimes they come back with something really incredible and sometimes they come back with something you didn’t want to see. For me, I have seen that my shoulders were up. It’s a kind of a dance critique because you see yourself candidly.”

Still, she says, she likes seeing what students, especially first-time dancegoers, produce. “They love to take pictures of us turning, with a slow exposure, so it’s blurry, which a dance photographer wouldn’t do,” she says. “But it’s pretty cool. And they like to take pictures of us putting on our pointe shoes. All of these photos wind up being strangely personal in a way.” 
 
The final product 
Once the encounter is over, Mitchell’s students have a week or two to complete their work, depending on what level they’re at. Then she and the students make decisions about matting and how best to present the work.

“Anyone who has participated is invited to submit one or several of their works, already matted, to exhibit in the show we have during the June [performances],” Gruener says. All participating artists are asked to fill out information cards that list their names, school affiliations, and other pertinent details. The show is not juried; according to Gruener, “If we have a lot of work we may have to cut back, but I always hang at least one piece from everyone who participated. It’s a light process—it’s fun. It’s to look at the wonderful art these young people have created being inspired by our company.”

Mitchell’s drawing students have to make a piece from the event, although they don’t have to enter it. But, the teacher adds, the event has a reputation as “a cool thing to do. You get to get out of school and go watch the dancers, so they always look forward to that part of it.” 

Sketches and photos are hung from ballet barres in the Keller; some years have seen as many as 200 pieces hanging at a time. (Gruener says she tries to alternate high school and college works with the display.) All the participants get two tickets to come to the show.

Mitchell has found that that kind of exposure makes her students work just a little bit harder. “They have a lot more motivation to do their best work,” she says. “I try to use that peer pressure, or maybe it’s peer support, as often as I can as an art teacher. It’s a wonderful venue for students to have their work be seen. It’s not just like making work in the classroom that no one will see. It’s a more professional venue. Their parents are very excited to have their daughters’ work out there—they can bring family to see it.” 

Students can also sell their work if they like. At OBT’s information table in the lobby, would-be buyers can fill out request forms indicating their interest. OBT asks students and schools for the rights to reprint work for its publications, but the company turns over the request forms to the schools, and proceeds from any sale directly benefit the young artists, along with boosting their portfolios. The company has not yet exhibited the work through Portland’s First Thursday art walk, but Gruener says that could be another option to raise awareness.

Either way, OBT also gets a boost in the end. “I’ve heard young people say, ‘I took dance when I was young. I wish I hadn’t stopped, I should take it again,’ ” Gruener says. “They see the high skill level of our company and get inspired to dance again. And people who haven’t taken dance, especially the guys, are kind of taken aback at the level of athleticism, because they had no exposure to dance. It shifts their thinking, although I have no statistical measure of how much.”

The event also opens people’s eyes to a new art form, she says. “They could become wonderful audiences or artists themselves. All of them are inoculated with dance, so that’s cool.” Gruener wasn’t aware of any other companies with a similar program; at a Dance USA event held in Portland a few years earlier, she described it to colleagues; they seemed surprised and interested, she says. 

To the companies and studios that are considering implementing a similar program, Gruener has just one small piece of advice. “The key is, don’t think of it as a money-making opportunity, because it’s really not,” she says with a laugh. “Think of it as a goodwill gesture to the community, and the rest will follow.” 

Let song and dance bring students to your door

By Heather Wisner

Triple threats—performers who can dance, sing, and act—may have a better shot at show-biz success than their specialist counterparts. So do dance studios offering the musical-theater classes to build those skills also have a competitive advantage? Some studio owners think so.

“Our program is very, very popular—it’s one of those things that sets our studio apart in our market and our demographic. It brings new students to us,” says Jaune Buisson, owner of Metropolitan Dance Theatre in New Orleans.

Emma England, director of Studio 3 Performing Arts Academy in Gilbert, Arizona, says musical theater has attracted boys who weren’t necessarily interested in dance to her studio, swayed in part by the popularity of films like High School Musical.

“Since its inception, it’s been one of our most popular classes,” says Kristin Foltz Petrou of the musical-theater instruction at her studio, Tap ’n Arts, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

And Megan Baade, the owner/director of Garri Dance Studio in Burbank, California, says, “Our students love the classes; [the program] helps boost self-esteem in our dancers, and I always have an abundance of teachers who would be glad to teach. It is a win–win for everyone!”

Getting started
So how does one create a musical-theater program? Sometimes, it begins with one class that generates enough enthusiasm to justify adding more.

About five years ago, Baade created a musical-theater class for students ages 3 to 5. The teacher chose an age-appropriate story or musical, then taught lyrics and dance routines, incorporating various dance styles. “The children would also work to learn short lines and scenes—very simple ones for this age,” she says. “Once we put it all together, the kids themselves were telling a story. We called this class ‘Storybook Theatre.’ ”

The initial class, which involved theater games and an emphasis on conveying emotion through facial expressions and movement, was such a hit that Baade added a class called “Triple Threat” for students ages 6 and older. The staff works with students on vocals, choreography, and scenes. There are theater games and activities, and students get scripts to work on in class and memorize at home.

“Quickly, we went from having one Triple Threat class to three or four of them to accommodate the growing interest,” Baade says. Now there are three levels of Triple Threat; students are evaluated and placed into appropriate levels based on age and ability. Over the summer, the studio added Broadway Kids Camps, and this fall it began offering new acting and voice classes to supplement the Triple Threat classes. Baade hopes to gradually build students’ knowledge of theater while they continue training in ballet, tap, or jazz.

At Tap ’n Arts, the musical-theater program developed almost in reverse, beginning with the studio’s annual dance show, Steppin’ Out. “In preparation for the show, we would gather a group of students representing some of the various classes we offer to perform a musical theater production routine,” says Petrou. “With my background in both dance and theater, over the years we performed routines from such Broadway hits as Annie, Crazy for You, Mary Poppins, and Phantom of the Opera, just to name a few. They would feature students not only dancing but also singing and acting as well. They always seemed to be audience favorites and would receive rave reviews.”  While the studio was wrapping up rehearsals for its 2007 show, there was talk of offering musical-theater instruction that summer, directly after the show. “We were able to use the routine as the advertisement for the class we were about to begin offering,” Petrou says. “Immediately after the show, we began receiving inquiries on how to enroll in the musical-theater class.” The class has become so popular that the studio now plans to offer a junior musical-theater class this fall.

Camp to class and back again
To attract students to musical theater, Metropolitan has taken a kind of cross-referencing approach, referring studio kids to its summer camps and summer campers back to its studio. There was just one musical-theater class when Buisson arrived. “Now we have three levels, we have camps, we have intensives, we have private lessons,” she says.

Metropolitan actually grew its curriculum after Hurricane Katrina flooded the building in which it had been housed for nearly 30 years. “I live in a very saturated market,” Buisson says. “In the old building, there were three dancing schools on my block.” After offering temporary classes in local beauty parlors and a hurricane-gutted former nail salon, Buisson and her staff found a new, more central location where the school could expand its musical-theater instruction.

Metropolitan now offers musical-theater programs for ages 7 to 10, 11 to 13, and 13 and up. Students take acting classes and voice lessons and learn choreography for musicals, supplemented by the school’s regular ballet, tap, and conditioning classes. Preteen classes work with scripts, while older students do audition preparation and monologue work.

Buisson has found that offering a varied curriculum, in varied formats, has helped build the program. “Summer camp is a great way to introduce kids to our program—it attracts performers,” she says. “We start each day with a dance warm-up, followed by a vocal warm-up. We have acting classes in the afternoon.” Each camp has room for 36 kids and runs for a week, culminating in a show that combines the skills students have worked on.

Summer intensives, in turn, evolved from camp—this year, 50 teenagers took class three hours a day for two weeks. “We explain to bunheads that to get a job, you have to be able to sing,” Buisson says.

“We’re going out in the community to find students,” she says. “We offer free classes but we never pressure people to sign up. People see us performing and say, ‘That was great—I want my daughter to do this.’ ” —Emma England, Studio 3 Performing Arts Academy

Camp and summer intensives also give students (and their parents) a better feel for the year-round program, which is important if they’re considering more intensive training or transitioning from another studio. “They can talk, they play, they feel out the school and the program, and when they come to school, they’ve already made a few friends,” Buisson says. Typically, 60 to 70 percent of campers are already enrolled at the studio, while others may be involved in sports or live in other neighborhoods; Buisson hopes that these students will commit more fully to her studio later.

Studio 3, which specializes in musical theater, also offers a mix of classes and camps. Director Emma England says the mix gives her students a strong performance foundation. “Some will dance, but not professionally; those who do will have a better chance to succeed in the arts if they have a well-rounded background,” she says. “If you want to go on Broadway or a cruise ship, it will help you to have that training.”

Studio 3 has two musical-theater levels: the introductory Applause program, for ages 3 through teen, and the Showstoppers audition-only program for ages 5 through teen. In the Applause program, 20 to 30 kids (some of whom have no experience) come once a week to learn basic music, dance, and acting skills, which are then parlayed into shows. If they’re interested, they can later pursue the more rigorous Showstoppers program, which includes ballet and jazz technique, voice, and production classes. Younger kids attend this program 3 hours per week; older kids average 6 to 9 hours, with some logging as many as 11 hours per week. Showstopper kids (their number averages around 50) do themed musical revue performances throughout the year, for community and holiday events, retirement homes, and theme parks outside the area.

“You may have brought someone into the studio who was interested in drama who discovers they love dance,” says England of her cross-referencing tactic. “It’s also a great way to get boys into the program. We have boys whose sisters come to dance—they try musical theater and say, ‘Hey, this is cool.’ ”

Along with these semester-based programs, the studio produces a traditional musical-theater camp and the two-week Pop Academy summer camp, in which kids ages 6 and up learn pop songs and some dance technique.

Pop Academy capitalizes on the popularity of teen hits like High School Musical and Hannah Montana. “A lot of kids don’t know what musical theater is, but if you present it in their language, they say, ‘Oh yeah, I want to do that,’ ” England says. “You have to have a good explanation of your program. In summer camp, we do a more contemporary pop style; then, when you throw an older musical like Annie and Oliver! at them, they’re more familiar with the idea.”

A Making Music Videos summer camp lets kids sing, dance, and act in their own music videos. England videotapes the kids doing scenes, then edits the footage into music videos. The camp ends in a video showcase for the parents.

If all that weren’t enough, England staged Grease last fall, opening participation to community members as well as students in an attempt to build studio enrollment.

Who will teach?
The people who help generate new musical-theater programs often teach them as well. Buisson, who holds drama and communications degrees from the University of New Orleans, teaches classes herself, aided by two longtime friends with whom she used to perform. She also hires former students, including one who just finished a tour of Cats and another who’s been working at Tokyo Disney. Their success in the industry seems to further motivate her current students, she says. Petrou has also hired former students over the years, as well as advertising for instructors on websites, including craigslist.com.

England, who grew up in community theater productions and studied music and dance in college, teaches many of the classes herself, aided by drama and vocal coaches and assistants from the community. Before she hires teachers, she starts by contacting colleagues she knows in the dance world, watching them teach class to see how they work with students and whether they click with the studio philosophy.

“I think my fellow studio owners would be surprised at how many of their dance instructors on staff have had theater experience and will be able to teach classes,” Baade says. “If not, you will have an inpouring of applicants if you put the word out on dance.net and craigslist.com. I brought in teachers who had musical-theater experience and a true passion for stage performance.”

If you build it, will they come?
No matter how great the musical-theater classes or programs may be, they need a steady stream of students to survive. As Baade indicated, one way to advertise new offerings is through existing offerings, like a studio’s annual show. Traditional print and broadcast advertising are another option, along with electronic mailers and word of mouth.

“Every year we place an advertisement in our local newspaper for the studio and all of the classes we offer,” Petrou says. “These ads would direct potential customers to visit our website or call the studio office for more information. We also obtain a lot of students through referrals and word of mouth.”

Buisson, too, enjoys word-of-mouth business. “A full-page ad will do nothing if you don’t have parents who are happy, and apparently I’m the talk of the ballpark,” she says. “We have our website updated regularly, and we send electronic newsletters to parents that they can then send to family.”

Like her colleagues, England has advertised through email and craigslist postings, as well as postcard mailings and appearances at community events, where she shows video clips of programs. “We’re going out in the community to find students,” she says. “We offer free classes but we never pressure people to sign up. People see us performing and say, ‘That was great—I want my daughter to do this.’ ” She has also attracted attention through news coverage of the studio’s auditions and camps. “It’s about getting your name out there as many places as possible,” she says.

Programs don’t develop overnight: “You have to be flexible and you have to be willing to compete,” says Buisson. But for studio owners who love musical theater and don’t mind multitasking, the rewards can be significant for participants and viewers alike.

“I like having the challenge of putting three parts together,” says England. “That’s why musical theater is so great—you’re putting everything together in a package that the audience can enjoy and take a message from.”

Sheet Music Sources

If you’re venturing into the world of musical theater, you’ve got to have scores to work from. Browse these sources for sheet music to get your kids singing.

Great Scores greatscores.com/p/sheet/style/Musicals
Theatre Bookstore theatrehistory.com/bookstore/sheetmusic.html
Stage Plays stageplays.com
Broadway Sheet Music musicnotes.com/broadway
Sheet Music Plus sheetmusicplus.com
Musical Heaven musicalheaven.com
Music Forte musicforte.com
Broadway Sheet Music dot Net broadwaysheetmusic.net
FreeHand freehandmusic.com
Sheet Music Direct sheetmusicdirect.us

Dancing Across Borders follows Sokvannara Sar’s incredible journey from Cambodia to the U.S.

By Heather Wisner

As a young folk dancer in his native Cambodia, Sokvannara Sar never dreamed of pursuing a professional ballet career; not long ago, in fact, he was unaware that ballet even existed. So how he got from his village to the corps of Seattle’s Pacific Northwest Ballet—with an extended layover in New York City and a side trip to Varna—makes for a remarkable story. Anne Bass has captured it in her engaging documentary, Dancing Across Borders, which came out last summer.

A bold move
The story begins in 2000, when Bass, on a visit to Cambodia, saw Sar perform with a local folk dance troupe entertaining tourists at Angkor Wat. “His performance really struck me,” she says. “He was very musical, with perfect proportions, and full of joy, which is important for a dancer. He was very charismatic onstage. He just stood out.”

Sokvannara Sar demonstrates his elevation as he dances in Benjamin Millepied’s Etude No. 5 (Photo by Erin Baiano)

Sar, called Sy (pronounced “See”) for short, had started dance training in fifth grade, mostly for fun, but later as a way to supplement his family’s income. After his training, he moved on to the performance stage, then to the company. He enjoyed performing with his friends and making extra money for school—“a dollar or two, which would help us with books and pencils.”

Bass thought about Sar long after her trip was over; she believed he deserved greater access to dance training than he was getting. She mulled over the idea of bringing him to the United States to study at New York City’s School of American Ballet (SAB), where she had served as a board member for many years. “In a way, when I look back on this, it surprises me,” Bass says of her involvement. “It’s not something I might usually do; it was like I was being made to do it.”

Eventually, the invitation was extended to him through the World Monuments Fund, which helped sponsor his dance troupe. The WMF, which helped him obtain a visa, told Sar’s family that it could be a good opportunity for him and that he would be in good hands.

“I always heard a lot about America; I saw it on TV and thought it was pretty remarkable,” Sar says. “When someone told me to travel there, I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t think it was going to happen, but I said, ‘OK, I’ll go to America.’ It’s a big move, to go to the other side of the world.”

Culture shock
Sar and his chaperone arrived in New York in May 2000. He thought he had come just to look at SAB, but he wound up staying for the next few years, with Bass as his sponsor, making the school’s dorms and studios his new home.

The situation became complicated almost immediately, as everyone recalls.

“When someone told me to travel there, I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t think it was going to happen, but I said, ‘OK, I’ll go to America.’ It’s a big move, to go to the other side of the world.” —Sokvannara Sar

Bass had brought photos of the 16-year-old Sar to SAB’s offices, but hadn’t mentioned his age to Peter Boal, who was teaching men’s classes at SAB. Boal says he trusted Bass’ eye for dance, but after he and colleague Jock Soto gave Sar his first ballet audition, they were skeptical. The audition “wasn’t a disaster,” Boal says. “He was handsome and well proportioned and he had great elevation. But he was untrained, and we had the language problem. The level of a 16-year-old was just not there.”

Although Sar had dance experience and knew how to charm an audience and respond to music, Boal says, launching him into a professional ballet career was “a one-in-a-million shot.”

Enter Olga Kostritzky, a longtime SAB teacher who retired last summer. “When I first saw him, he was tiny, tiny, tiny. I thought he was 12,” she says. Rather than giving him a ballet audition, she asked him to perform Cambodian dance. “I lift his leg, I touch his foot, and because he is a dancer, he can follow. I tell Anne, ‘He has a good jump, good feet, a good plié. He is musical; he is elegant. I think in a previous life, he was a prince. He makes a statement. He has a presence.’ ”

A compromise was struck: Bass proposed that Sar study privately with Kostritzky over the summer, then see how he progressed.

“It was sort of like My Fair Lady—a good challenge for a great teacher,” says Boal. “She had the time and wanted to take it on. You could see the frustration in the studio, but that’s how you get where you want to go.”

The sheer determination of both dancer and teacher is evident in the film, which features extensive studio footage. If nothing else, the film offers an unvarnished look at the plain hard work it takes to be a dancer. (Sar didn’t speak any English when he arrived, so in addition to studying with Kostritzky, he started English classes through Berlitz.) That summer he also trained at the New York State School for the Arts in Saratoga and at the Rock School in Philadelphia.

According to Kostritzky, their early relationship had its ups and downs. “It was very difficult: He didn’t speak my language, I didn’t speak his language, everything that was beautiful to me was ugly to him,” she says. “When you are a foreigner, you miss your parents, you miss your country, people make fun of the way you speak. I understood him, so we had a bonding experience. We were nice to each other, but it was also rough. Where he comes from, a woman doesn’t tell a man what to do. We talk about, ‘Oh, I miss the food,’ but then I tell him what to do and he becomes a man! We didn’t fight, but it was boot camp, for him and for me.”

Everything seemed difficult to Sar at first. Turning out was a foreign concept and his teachers were frustrated when he didn’t finish combinations. “Olga had to break me a little bit. She would yell at me a lot and I would get mad, so I would try to do better so I wouldn’t get yelled at,” he jokes. But as he improved, he became more enthusiastic about coming to the studio and trying new things. With his teacher’s patience and persistence, he began to enjoy the new dance idiom bit by bit.

“In the beginning I don’t think he liked it; he just wanted to prove to himself he could do it,” Kostritzky says. “But when we went to the center floor, started to jump, do some exercises, I see his interest changed. We motivated each other, actually. I was amazed at the speed he learned.”

Sar especially enjoyed jumping, which he said gave him a feeling of freedom. He began to catch up with his peers. “Olga is the teacher of many professional dancers, so the fact she would spend her time with me was great. It made me work a little bit harder,” he says.

The experience stretched Kostritzky as well. “Every day was an enormous amount of learning,” she says. “It was the biggest, hardest, and most satisfying experience of my life. I have a lot of beautiful dancers, but when you have someone come from the other side of the world—from the moon!—you learn a lot about yourself.”

Transition time
The hard work paid off. In the fall of 2000, with the approval of teachers who evaluated his progress, Sar started at SAB’s Boys 3 level. By January, he had moved up to Boys 4. The next three years brought intermediate training and the year after that, advanced. The visit had turned into an extended stay.

Sar faced both physical and cultural challenges in class. “Poor Sy had some problems with leg cramps, moments where he felt like his legs would freeze,” says Boal. “Sometimes he wanted to do his own interpretation of the combination, and that can be difficult. It comes through on the film—he’s one of the sweetest human beings with good intentions, but he was facing strict pedagogy.”

Bass and Boal noted that Sar did have some natural gifts: a big jump, musicality, stage presence, good proportions, and a very stretched Achilles tendon. (“Cambodians don’t sit on chairs; they sit on their heels,” Bass says.) He also possessed a strong work ethic and a fair amount of grit. When he began training, he was taking class with children half his age, as well as battling culture shock and a language barrier. Besides a rigorous dance training schedule, he had enrolled in the Professional Children’s School. Boal recalls that Sar had high expectations of himself—and was often hard on himself.

“You have to study all these subjects in English, so it was hard, but there are other students there who aren’t too much better than me,” Sar says with a laugh. “I had some English tutor a little bit, but a lot of it was my own studying. I used my own dictionary and stuff like that. Just walking around, I heard a lot.”

To combat homesickness, he spent time with SAB’s director of student life, who took him out for pizza, and visited the Cambodian family of his translator, where he could relax over familiar foods and conversation. Over time, he made friends and began to have a social life. “Everyone breathed a sigh of relief” about that, Boal says. “He’s very likable.”

Bass says that Sar was something of a stoic, working quietly and without complaint. “The hardest thing was not the work, it was the culture,” she says. “It was very isolating and lonely for him. That was the point where I said to myself, ‘What have I done?’ To this day, I don’t know what was going on in his head. I think he didn’t want to disappoint me, which was hard. We had multiple conversations—at the end of maybe four or five years, I was really sure he loved it. I wasn’t sure he loved it at first, but I wonder how someone could do something so well if they didn’t love it.”

Bass and Kostritzky also persuaded Sar that competing at Varna might be a good experience. At first, he balked. “I just don’t like competing so much, and there wasn’t time to prepare much,” he says. “So we decided to go there and just have an experience. But I’m glad I went—it’s a popular competition, it’s a big one, and I think I’m the first Cambodian there. They flew my flag, so that was good. A lot of people would do the same thing but do it differently, so it was interesting. I learned some tricks.”

Sar also managed to visit home, on one occasion performing ballet for many first-time balletgoers at the reopening of the U.S. Embassy in Phnom Penh. There were surprises on both sides of the curtain. “The first time going back home—it’s really different, really strange,” he says. “You don’t see how things change in the village when you go away so far and come back. You get shocked a little bit. I do get homesick. I just have to remind myself that I have my whole family back there.”

A new life
Toward the end of his advanced classes, Sar began thinking about his next step. “I couldn’t decide at the time if I wanted to stick with it or do it a little bit and go back home,” he said. “But I kept doing it—nobody told me to do it. There was a little bit of pressure, but I decided if it gets too much, I’ll stop. There was some pressure from my family. It’s hard for someone to leave the country; people expect something. But they kept encouraging me, telling me, ‘It’s a good opportunity, so do what you can.’

“I did put some pressure on myself—for me to catch up, I have to do that,” he continues. “At some point, I thought ‘It can’t be too difficult,’ so I kept working myself.” (In an on-camera moment many dancers will recognize, Sar’s parents tell Bass that they’re proud of his progress, although his father says he wishes Sar did something more stable, like taking a government job.)

Sar took as many auditions as he could, said Boal, who at that time was transitioning from teaching at SAB to becoming the artistic director of Pacific Northwest Ballet. Boal felt that Sar deserved a chance, and made personal calls to directors to plead his case.

But at 5-foot-7, Sar was not the 6-foot-tall romantic lead that many directors were looking for. So Boal invited Sar to try the PNB School for the summer. Sar liked it and was enrolled as a student; eventually, PNB became his next home. “At the end of that year, I didn’t have a lot of boys, so I hired my best girl and my best boy, which was Sy,” Boal says.

So pleased was Boal with Sar’s progress that he offered Sar a job with Pacific Northwest Ballet as an apprentice in 2006; he was promoted to the corps de ballet in 2007. Since then, he has danced a few featured roles—the Sword Dancer doll and Dervish in Nutcracker, the jester in La Sonnambula. He also danced a solo in Benjamin Millepied’s 3 Movements, choreographed at PNB.

Nobody is sure what the future holds. “He has challenges every day in his dancing that he knows about and is working on,” Boal says. “Because of his height, it’s difficult [for him] to partner a ballerina, so he’s hard to cast in some roles. He’ll have to see in the long run if this is the right fit for him. We usually ask if people are interested in doing choreography and he hasn’t expressed that to me. He’s still immersed in learning roles.”

Kostritzky, who periodically speaks with Sar by phone, thinks he just needs a partner his own size. “I told him, ‘Get a girl from the corps and practice the Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux. It would be good for both you.” She doesn’t think his stature should necessarily hinder him. “He could do the first movement from Symphony in C, Coppélia. He could do the first pas in Swan Lake. He could do a lot of things,” she says.

Sar plans to stick with ballet for the next five years. “I’m also looking forward to going to school and picking up something I’m interested in, so when I quit dancing maybe it will help me,” he said. “I have to think what I like to do, and what is good for the long run.”

Editor’s note: Just as Sokvannara Sar never set out to be a ballet dancer, Anne Bass never intended to be a documentary filmmaker. Dancing Across Borders began as a video record of Sar’s progress to send to his parents back home, then developed into a full-length documentary. It debuted at the 2009 Seattle International Film Festival and was shown at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in August and at the San Diego Asian Film Festival in October. Theatrical release and distribution are still in the works.

How studio owners use dance videos as teaching tools

By Heather Wisner

“Which movies can I show him to get him interested in dance?” This urgent query came from a friend of mine with a 4-year-old son shortly before they headed off to San Francisco’s Ethnic Dance Festival. After wracking my brain (Billy Elliot? Too mature. Singin’ in the Rain? Too long. Hmm . . . ), I turned to studio owners to find out what videos they liked to show to different age groups and which videos best served a particular purpose. Most teachers like to add interest to their lessons with visual aids, of course, and dance teachers are no exception. Based on the responses I got, you could say that studios use dance videos in service of the three Is: introduction, instruction, and inspiration—or in some cases, all three.

As an introduction
Very young children sometimes find it helpful to see examples of movement while they’re still getting their own limbs under control. And as many teachers have found, music and visuals can sometimes capture children’s attention and jog their memories as well as, if not better, than spoken instruction.

“For my 3-year-olds, I sometimes use clips of The Wiggles—great if there are little boys in the class,” says Maria Jacobs, owner of Valley Forge Dance School in King of Prussia, PA. “Besides a Captain Feathersword number, I like ‘Five Little Ducks’ to teach them how to drop out of a dance one by one. I use ‘Five Little Ladybugs’ for the same reason, and the children love the song. It gives everyone a chance to sit down and refocus, and one picture is worth a thousand words.”

Among studio owners, the most popular videos for young children range from Shirley Temple films to animated shorts featuring Angelina Ballerina, the dancing mouse. “I would suggest any Shirley Temple movies for the young ones who love to tap and sing,” says Dana Loving-Sparks, owner of In-Step Dance and Performing Arts Center of The Woodlands and Conroe, TX.

Rhonda Foote, director of Rhonda’s FooteWorks in Syracuse, NY, agrees: “I also use The Wiggles and Mary-Kate and Ashley’s ballet video for little kids’ dance camps. Shirley Temple is a big hit with them, too.”

“Shirley Temple movies—she’s awesome,” says Melinda Shaner, artistic director of the Conservatory of Dance in Silver City, NM. “The Barbie dance movies are not too bad and the kids love them.” Although Barbie’s producers have taken a bit of artistic license with storytelling, Shaner says, the videos are a great introduction to classical music and dancing.

One director finds that videos also help put young dancers in the mood for class. “The all-age–friendly top film, as far as I am concerned, is Tales of Beatrix Potter, which uses The Royal Ballet,” says Nancy Whyte, head of Nancy Whyte School of Ballet in Bellingham, WA. “Children and adults of all ages adore this film. The children in my studio sit and watch videos before class time arrives, and this is my number-one choice for the younger classes especially.”

As instruction
Older children, especially those with good attention spans, can benefit from videos in two important ways: They can see examples of the work they’re learning and absorb some dance history and context in the process.

“For our June recital we’re doing excerpts from Coppélia, which we’ve never done before,” says Jacobs. “I have several videos—Kirov, Australian Ballet—that I’ve been showing so they better understand the mazurka, a character dance. I’ve also shown Anna Pavlova in The Dying Swan so that they get a sense of dance history. I have a biographical movie of Anna Pavlova which I may show during lunch breaks in our daytime summer intensive.”

Lori Pryor, artistic director of Dance Foundations in Columbia, MD, draws her instructional videos from a large collection of musical classics and modern professional productions. “Some of the studio’s favorites are Give a Girl a Break, You Were Never Lovelier, Singin’ in the Rain, My Sister Eileen, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, and Oklahoma!” she says. “We most often watch them during dance camp at lunchtime, but I have taken breaks in classes to show a particular video section if we are learning something from that show.

“I have also shown the students professional videos for the same purpose: No Maps on My Taps, Tap, LaVaughn Robinson’s Dancing History, Tap Heat,” Pryor continues. “I also show videos in our waiting room in advance of a guest artist: Gus Giordano’s work before [his daughter] Nan visited, Frank Hatchett, Fosse before Andy Blankenbuehler came, Dancemaker and Wrecker’s Ball from Paul Taylor before Liz Walton visited. It’s been so helpful for them to see the work before they do it, since many are visual learners. . . . During our ballet intensive we watch at least one ballet and study it and discuss it.”

This practice seems especially popular at studios that produce a Nutcracker. “For older children, I use the prior year’s video of our Nutcracker ballet when we start rehearsing every fall,” says Jacobs. “It motivates the children who are in the video to want to do even better this year, and it helps the new performers come up to speed quickly.”

Adds Shaner, “I think that this year I will require my Nutcracker cast to watch one or two versions of Nutcracker.”

In addition to serving as learning tools for new steps and combinations, videos can help students think about creating steps and working in different styles, says Loving-Sparks, who shows A Chorus Line, Grease, Fosse, Chicago, and Cabaret to her advanced students. “I use the movies’ scenes in musical theater, jazz, and Broadway dance classes,” she says. “I let the kids watch the scenes and then they come up with different ways of [creating] choreography themselves. [Film] is good to use in choreography classes as well. It gives them a feeling of pride and accomplishment, of trying something new and exciting.”

As inspiration          
One reason that dancers of all ages return to dance on film is the inspiration they draw from seeing performers at the peak of their technical and artistic powers. Many studio owners and teachers use videos to show their students important dancers throughout history and changes in dance styles over time.

Older children can benefit from videos in two important ways: They can see examples of the work they’re learning and absorb some dance history and context in the process.

“Because we are an old studio with much history, I feel strongly about educating the new generations about the classics. Not all students have parents that danced, therefore many of them have never heard of Fred Astaire,” says Kim Brokaw, owner of Jill Mallory Studio of Dance in Miami, FL. “We work hard to stay current with our music and choreography styles, but try to still let them know how it all started. Last year we found a funky remake of Singin’ in the Rain by Mint Royale, but I made them all watch Gene Kelly dancing the original. They loved it! I think 1 out of 18 had ever heard of him. We even have kids now who have never seen movies like The Wizard of Oz.”              

Melanie Hedden-Perron, owner of Rising Star Performing Arts in Waterdown, Ontario, Canada, likes to show her students old MGM musicals and That’s Entertainment. “We have used clips to introduce our students to the great dancers of the past so they have a connection to the past,” she says.

Shelly Beech, owner of Art of Motion Dance in Bartlesville, OK, also likes That’s Entertainment videos. “They are too long to watch in one sitting but have great production numbers and show a nice history of the movie musical,” she says. “I have also used videos from Biography. It’s a great way to educate dancers about the roots of dance.”           

Videos can also serve as “a great teaching tool for the history of dance and the changing of styles,” says Linda R. Kalnen, an instructor at Southeast Dance Academy in Wilmington, NC. “The studios I’ve previously owned have found movies and video to be useful tools. A picture tells a million unspoken words.”

Bettijane Grey-Robinson, director of Commonwealth Dance Academy in Walpole, MA, believes that dance videos can also help students relate to their peers in other parts of the world. “A good movie for preteens and teens interested in serious ballet is The Children of Theatre Street,” she says. “It is about girls and boys accepted into the Leningrad ballet academy [Kirov] in Russia. Although it shows the dance students participating in formal ballet classes, it also shows them as real youngsters who sometimes are late to class, tease each other, get homesick, or have fun.”

In some cases, videos can help further a school’s mission as well. “We operate a grant-funded program for local schools called Express the Positive,” says Foote. “Our goal with this program is twofold: to introduce fine arts to students who may not otherwise have the opportunity to find out about them, and to build self-esteem and positive self-expression through the arts.”

Not all students will respond to all videos, of course, so it’s important to choose wisely and recognize when something isn’t working. Diane Abraham, a co-owner of the Dance Studio of Wakefield in Massachusetts, found that her students didn’t relate to Fame and found West Side Story too long.

Another concern is when to show the videos: Some teachers have a movie night, while others show videos during lunch breaks, before and after class, or in class. “I don’t want to take away from class time, where they need to build their technique,” says Jacobs, although she does feel compelled to make dance films available to her students. “If more dance movies were on TV, inspiring children to pursue the art form for its beauty, perhaps I wouldn’t feel the need to show them myself. The only problem I’ve encountered is some parents looking askance when they see my class sitting on the floor, watching a brief video on our classroom’s TV. I don’t see this as an issue, but I usually explain the what and why to them.”

Ultimately, when students (and parents) understand what can be gleaned from watching dance videos, everyone benefits. “Everything old is new again from a child’s perspective,” Foote says. “If it is in your possession and is age appropriate, they will watch, absorb, and enjoy.”

Dance Films Reference List

Here are some of the dance videos that studio owners across the country suggested for use in class, based on genre and age-appropriateness. We’ve added a few films for good measure. To add your favorites, email Jeff@rheegold.com or write to Jeff Warzecha, Dance Studio Life, 10 South Washington St., Norton, MA 02766. 

Young dancers (up to age 6)
Angelina Ballerina
Any movie with Shirley Temple
Barbie in The Nutcracker
The Tales of Beatrix Potter
Any movie with The Wiggles
Mary Poppins
Zoe’s Dance Moves
Happy Feet

School-age children and preteens (7–12)
Give a Girl a Break
You Were Never Lovelier
Singin’ in the Rain
My Sister Eileen
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
Oklahoma!
That’s Entertainment series
The Wizard of Oz
42nd Street
Annie
Newsies
White Christmas
Busby Berkeley productions (Yankee Doodle Dandy, Gold Diggers of ’33, etc.)
The Children of Theatre Street

Teens
Fame
Grease
Tap
Center Stage
A Chorus Line
Chicago
Step Up
Sweet Charity
Hair
Pippin
White Nights
The Turning Point
Billy Elliot
Stomp the Yard
All That Jazz
Fosse
Funny Face
An American in Paris
Hairspray
Dancers
You Got Served
High School Musical
West Side Story
Cabaret
On the Town

Instructional/historical videos
The Nutcracker (various versions)
Company videos (Martha Graham, Mark Morris, Alvin Ailey, Paul Taylor, Gus Giordano, Savion Glover, ballet company videos)
Biography series
Ballets Russes