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Behind the Scenes Gets High School Students to Think Broadly About Careers in the Arts

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Pentacle’s Behind the Scenes provides high school students with an in-depth exploration of the many different avenues to a career in dance. At Frank Sinatra School of the Arts (FSSA) the Senior Dancers are producing a show of their original choreography on May 23rd in the Tony Bennett Concert Hall entitled “Neo.” This year we reached out to other departments to involve film and music students to help create video interludes and promotions for the concert in collaboration with dancers.

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To facilitate these cross-disciplinary collaborations, a group of students from the dance, film, music, and software engineering majors at FSSA are participating in a series of Saturday workshops at Dubspot, an electronic music and DJ school. Over four intensive three-hour workshops students are learning about all aspects of music and performance technology which is informing their work for the concert and giving them a solid ground for collaboration. For the second year in a row FSSA alum, Abraham Vasquez, a film student at Hunter College will be making videos with the students to help promote and enhance the concert. Pentacle’s director of Movement Media, Anna Brady Nuse will be consulting the students on ways of shooting dance effectively for screen.

At Gramercy Arts High School (GAHS), students are working with Choreography and Career Teaching Artists to develop choreography from sources outside of dance (literary, visual arts, music, and costume), and honing their marketing skills to promote their Spring concert.

In March Pentacle hosted it’s annual Screening Benefit at Village East Cinemas with a pre-release viewing of “ADMISSION” donated by Focus Features. The event was a resounding success for Pentacle’s Educational Programming. We reached our fundraising goal and everyone had a great time. Four other wonderful organizations partnered with Pentacle on the event – Big Apple Playback Theater, Barkin Selissen Project, The Dance Enthusiast, and Talking Drum Theatre Arts, all of whom provide arts and educational programming.

If you are interested in bringing Pentacle’s Behind the Scenes Program to your school, please contact Wendell Cooper, Program Director at 212-278-8111×314, wendellc[at]pentacle.org.

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