The semester is winding down at IU Bloomington, but the Bloomington Ballet Ensemble has not slowed down their community engagement efforts one bit. The Bloomington Ballet Ensemble is a student organization at IUB made up of Ballet Majors from the Jacobs School of Music. With the leadership of Robin Allen, a respected professor in the Ballet Department, the organization has been leading virtual dance events that connect with community members in Indiana rural communities. The group spent four weeks teaching classes to young students at the Washington County Family YMCA, and this past weekend, they sparked a new relationship with Nashville Jr. and Sr. High School Swing Choirs.
Thanks to the help of Nashville choir directors Dan Lyng and Kristi Billings, the Bloomington Ballet Ensemble was able to put together a one-day workshop for the choir students that encompassed diverse dance curriculum. The roughly 2.5 hour workshop included Pilates, Jazz, and Ballet instruction, as well as opportunities for the Nashville students to perform some of their swing pieces for the IU Ballet students. The Swing Choirs are gearing up for a performance on April 30th, so workshopping through their performance pieces with the visiting ballet instructors could not have been better timed. Nashville students gathered at the Brown County High School gymnasium, masked and socially distanced, and connected via zoom with the IU Ballet teachers who taught out of an on-campus studio. Both parties in Nashville and Bloomington were thrilled to connect and dance together, especially amidst a year where movement and expression became something difficult to attain or share.
“Working with the Center for Rural Engagement has been such an impactful experience. It has easily been one of my favorite parts of a semester that looks much different from a normal one. I am so passionate about dance and the power it has as an art form to inspire and move people. The Jacobs Community Initiative allows us the opportunity to share dance with a wider audience and make such a beautiful and powerful thing more accessible to those who likely have never experienced it before. Doing this while in the middle of a global pandemic makes it all the more exciting, as it demonstrates just how many ways there are (virtual and not) to bring new audiences to the ballet.”
-Morgan Jankowski, Bloomington Ballet Ensemble Member and Engagement Instructor
It seems this event may be the start of a lasting relationship between IU Ballet and the Nashville Swing Choirs, who are eager to collaborate again in the fall. The new landscape for virtual connection opens many possibilities for what this collaboration may look like, and how dance instruction could be offered more consistently through a combination of virtual and in-person events. The Bloomington Ballet Ensemble has been working to film instructional videos that can be shared and used with community partners on a more regular basis. Additionally, the Ballet Department at IU has a wonderful archive of past performances and productions that the Swing Choirs were introduced to at the workshop. During 5-10 minute break times, students relaxed between sessions and watched snippets of these Ballet archives, deepening their understanding of exactly what the Ballet program looks like at Indiana University.
COVID has been a challenging time for all, but Dan Lyng and Kristi Billings have been particularly dedicated towards keeping music and the arts alive for their students. Next year, Dan Lyng will be embracing a new role that focuses on the theatre department at Brown County Schools, widening his reach to new areas of the school system. The Bloomington Ballet Ensemble is working to imagine and plan a season of engagement next year that takes advantage of these many avenues and brings dance into as many lives as possible. As Bloomington Ballet Ensemble Member and Engagement Instructor Lilly Leech puts it, “Ballet is one of the rarest and most wonderful gifts. Ballet is most beautiful when experienced by people being themselves and sharing their joy with the world. Ballet has helped me find myself, and I hope to share this gift with as many others as possible.”
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