Students everywhere love to move, but it’s up to their teachers to decide how that will happen. While it could mean remaining cooped up and fidgety at a desk until recess, there are alternatives that don’t sacrifice learning for the sake of physical activity. One of the best and most innovative educational programs designed to combine movement and serious study was created right here in Santa Barbara by Cecily Stewart, a dancer and community outreach specialist with State Street Ballet.
In Stewart’s Library Dances program, professional dancers collaborate with teachers and students to create a hybrid performance that’s based on a work of classic literature. Students enter the world of a great book through movement as well as reading, and the results are spectacular. Young people who might otherwise be intimidated by ballet or Shakespeare wind up onstage, fully engaged by both art forms at once.
This weekend, Santa Barbara Junior High School presents its Library Dances project, the cheekily named Romeo and Pirouette, for two nights, on Friday, November 13, and Saturday, November 14, at the school’s Marjorie Luke Theatre. For this production, SBJHS drama teacher Rich Lashua has recruited not only Stewart and her State Street Ballet team but also UCSB’s Heather Stanford, an Equity actor who has created Shakespeare programs for schools all over the country.