On Tuesday, February 14th Education Assistant Melissa Croushorn visited Joyce Partnering Teacher Margaret Bary and her Fourth Grade Class at Brooklyn Friends School. Bary and her students participate in The Joyce’s Dance Education Program for Schools which presents performances by dance companies from around the world as a focal point for study in the classroom. The program is collaboratively designed to bring students, teachers, dance specialists, and artists together by learning in and through the art of dance.

With Joyce Teaching Artist Paul Thompson, Bary’s students explored the movement ideas they viewed in a recent performance by Dance Theatre of Harlem II in Donald Byrd’s Contested Space. A flurry of arms and legs (and a lot giggles), Bary’s fourth graders recreated their impressions of the opening floor solo in Byrd’s work. The session emphasized partnering with Thompson and Bary asking students to respond to each other’s movement expressions. Bary’s students were so mesmerized by the ballet vocabulary of Balanchine’s Glinka pas de Trois and David Fernandez’s Six Piano Pieces (Harlem Style) – which DTH II also performed at The Joyce – that Thompson offered them a brief ballet warm-up. These ambitious children eagerly stretched their feet into First and Second Position as they stretched down into plies, then struggled for their balance in releve. Students bravely tackled basic partnering work, leading their partner in a simple promenade and subsequently a supported jump!