Empowerment through artistic excellence.

What made 2,800 fourth- through sixth-graders sit spellbound at a performance last May, interact joyously when given the opportunity, and leap to a standing ovation at the end? Flashy costumes? Walt Disney characters? Wrong. It was an all-Stravinsky concert at Carnegie Hall with the American Composers Orchestra, under the direction of Rachael Worby, that left them cheering in the aisles and humming themes from Firebird on the way back to school. And that's only one example of how leading New York City arts organizations are reaching out to young spectators throughout the city. With the shared viewpoint that the arts are truly part of America's public domain - accessible to everyone, now and forever - the people who run Carnegie Hall, American Ballet Theatre, and the Joyce Theater are offering a range of fully professional performances to thousands of schoolchildren from the metropolitan area.

"Our numbers are the biggest, because we've been at this a long time," says Phyllis Susen, a former harpist with the Philadelphia Orchestra, who is now Carnegie Hall's director of education, the head of the operation that reached some 24,000 students in the 1994-95 season. In fact, Walter Damrosch conducted the first children's concerts in December 1891, seven months after the venerable hall opened. From 1958 to 1981, the CBS telecasts of the New York Philharmonic's Young People's Concerts under Leonard Bernstein reached millions of viewers. And it was part of that television series that inspired Worby, a grammar school student at the time, to become a conductor - quite a heady aspiration for a little girl in the Father Knows Best era. Worby is something of a wonder, not just because, as a woman conductor, she belongs to one of the tiniest professional associations in the world. Dressed in concert black (her version includes slacks and flat-heeled shoes), she darts from the stage into the audience with a cordless microphone. "Where have you heard those notes before? Who knows?" she inquires, as a sea of hands beckons recognition and a bid for the limelight. Never mind that it's quite a way from the podium to the back of the house, she traverses all aisles man times during the course of a fifty-minute session with full orchestra. Worby challenges the youngsters to "dare to be different" and "break down barriers," much as Stravinsky had done in music. The kids are transported - exuberant, yet polite. And they know all the answers because of months of cooperation between New York City schools and Link Up!, Carnegie Hall's classical music education program.

Link Up! was begun in 1985, one year after Worby took over the Carnegie Hall's children's concerts, to provide students with direct exposure to live orchestral music and to teach them basic music concepts. Each year the program emphasizes a different theme while establishing a connection with at least one other art form. During the first five months of 1995, musicians visited fifteen participating schools in four New York City boroughs. Classroom teachers were trained in a special workshop where they were given audio cassettes as well as resource manuals with sequentially linked activities to examine the theme "melody" and to explore why melody is memorable. Worby and members of the orchestra appeared at each school to perform a suite from Stravinsky's Pulcinella and to demonstrate how specific musical instruments sound and are played. Dance was integrated into the grand spring concert at Carnegie Hall, with members of the Nikolais/Louis Dance Lab in especially devised choreography by Murray Louis to make the shape and construction of Stravinsky's tunes visible. Sections of Petrouchka and Firebird were viewed" in dance sequences that were related strictly to the music's development, not the ballets' plots.

"Integration is critical to everything we do," explains Susen, "to reinforce the fact that music lives in a mortal context, not in isolation. As a creative expression, art is driven, perceived and enjoyed by human beings, who don't change very much over centuries." Easy familiarity with artists, composers, and the concert hall is another important objective. "We want to welcome young audiences into our world of music and find ways of sharing our passion with them, while maintaining the integrity of what we do." On this point, Carnegie Hall thinks big; the all-Stravinsky concert is but one of several examples. For 1995-96, the link is with literature and the theme is "Music Speaks." Beethoven's "Ode to Joy," the final movement of his Ninth Symphony, will be performed at Carnegie Hall for the youngsters by Worby and the orchestra, with the All City High School Chorus of New York. The scale is awesome. The goal is excellence.

Susen recognizes the power of the Link Up! activities to hone student skills in time management, analysis, critical assessment, problem solving and an array of empowerment tools that expand the individual's capacity for expression. "We stretch imaginations, yes," she affirms, "and expose them to the holistic nature of an artist's thought processes. We build on common bonds of musical knowledge and see concepts reflected as other disciplines are approached." She believes the nine- to twelve-year-old age selection is also significant. "The children are bright and know enough to make decisions. They are eager to learn and haven't yet become jaded."

Three other programs under her aegis have fewer participants and are aimed at different age groups. There are workshops in professional training for especially gifted youths. Jazzed is in its fourth season as an examination of the American jazz repertoire with high school students. Annually, Carnegie Hall also sponsors multigenerational neighborhood concerts that are easily accessible in such venues as public libraries and community centers across the city.

The charismatic Susen is a realist as well as ambitious. "We have many tools, but our budget and services are limited," she says. "New York City has one and a half million students in the public schools. What we do is to focus on a small part of that population and to do the very best we can with what we've got." At Carnegie Hall, "the very best" results in an incredibly high standard.

On June 1, 1995, the standards on the stage at the Metropolitan Opera House were equally lofty. More than 3,000 youngsters attended the Young People's Ballet Workshop with American Ballet Theatre in a special program hosted by David Richardson, an ABT ballet master. There was just a little talking and a great deal of spectacular dancing in full costume by principal Susan Jaffe and soloist Charles Askegard in the lustrous pas de deux from Kenneth MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet. Absolute concentration and silence prevailed in the house until the end. At last, he kissed her! A roaring cheer exploded and applause crashed. Serenity was restored with two excerpts from Paul Taylor's Airs. Macho virtuosity was seen in Gil Boggs's swordplay and death as Mercutio and in Johan Renvall's Bronze Idol solo from La Bayadere. According to an informal poll conducted afterwards, however, the best was yet to come.

The gold curtains at the Met opened to reveal Paloma Herrera and Angel Corella heading the cast of Balanchine's Theme and Variations, with twelve "guest artists" selected from the audience as temporary corps members. The students, each with an adult partner of the opposite gender, learned the grand polonaise and then got to sit in the wings to watch the full performance. One young woman from P.S. 398 judged Balanchine's ballet to be "as beautiful as heaven." Another from P.S. 306 thought it best ". . . when they held hands and twirled. I got goose bumps!"

Gary Dunning, ABT's executive director at the time, had considered education and outreach a mission of the company. His successor, Michael Kaiser, continues to extend this program throughout the New York City metropolitan area. "The company has always done a good job in this respect while on tour," Kaiser emphasizes. "Now we are launching a series of initiatives in our home community." The first of these, ABT Studio Company under the direction of Jeremy Blanton, was profiled in Part I of this series [November 1995, page 70]. Those young dancers will hone their technique while participating in lecture demonstrations and choreography workshops.

"We also want to welcome our adult audiences to new company programs," says Kaiser. In October, for the first time in fifteen years, American Ballet Theatre began to offer daily classes taught by staff members to the public at its 890 Broadway headquarters. Classes are available at beginning, intermediate, advanced and professional levels. "As a leading American classical institution," Kaiser adds, "we are experts in ballet. ABT can share our collective proficiency by inviting adults who wish to study into our studios."

Cynthia Gregory, a beloved former principal with ABT, led the first of another new public series in November. Billed as master classes, these events feature company dancers and choreographers in working sessions that demonstrate insider knowledge of particular roles and ballet sequences. Kaiser, who came on board in August, is convinced that enhancing the audience's perception of dance is "a year-round occupation that we must address. Our concern is not so much with the number of these opportunities as with the quality of each encounter." Along with continuing conversations between ABT and its many publics, he is also exploring the possibilities of performing in an array of different places. Led by the vision of artistic director Kevin McKenzie, American Ballet Theatre has already achieved enviable performance standards. Repeating that achievement in less traditional arenas is its current objective.

Since 1982, the Joyce Theater Foundation, Inc., has enjoyed an extraordinary record of success with a widely diverse community of dance audiences. The theater itself, a 472-seat house in Manhattan's Chelsea district, now hosts a range of outreach activities unmatched in New York City. In the course of a year programs range from avant-garde and classical to ethnic styles; works by master and emerging choreographers have been performed by domestic and international ensembles. "Our aim is to reach everyone out there," attests Linda Shelton, executive director of the foundation. For her, education has been a priority from the beginning. In the early years, twenty-eight public schools-with students ranging in age from kindergartners through high school seniors - collaborated with the Joyce on a program called the Arts in General Education Network. (The JDR Ill Fund, which was founded by John D. Rockefeller III, had funded AGE Network.)

To continue its commitment to reach young students, the foundation's board of directors created a full-time position last spring when it hired Joanne Robinson Hill as administrator of its Education Program. "While we are constantly exploring additional options," Hill says, "our outreach presently incorporates three components." Some forty schools are involved with Performances for Study, a series of fully produced concerts held Thursdays at noon where students can meet artists whose work they have been studying and assess issues of dance aesthetics and creative concerns. This year five workshops are to be held for teachers, principals, and administrators to orient them to the opportunities of the coming season.

The foundation has also identified four mentor schools - Hill's "buddy system" - that have special abilities for incorporating dance into their curriculum and can help others do the same. Pierre Dulaine and the American Ballroom Theater participated in 1994. Dulaine wanted youngsters who were willing to risk taking class with a partner of the opposite sex. Hill located a neighborhood school that had no dance instructor but did have an administrator who was eager for his students to be exposed to the art form.

On Saturdays, the Joyce Theater's special family matinees attract groups of all ages, with many grandparents in attendance. Maguy Marin's Waterzooi' opened this season's offerings. Marin's French dancers considered the young American spectators much more receptive than their counterparts in Europe, thanks to the foundation's educational efforts. Audiences at the Dance Humanities Series on Wednesday evenings can speak directly with choreographers and performers. In an especially forthright session in October, Ralph Lemon discussed his reasons for disbanding his company and his present wish to explore the creative possibilities of filming dance. These outreach activities have stimulated such enthusiasm among youthful spectators that a special series, Joyce Jr. Membership, was created.

"We also view our strong outreach program as a service to companies," Shelton points out. "Many have little experience in this area. By working with our staff, ensembles learn a great deal that can be implemented in other communities." Hill is always seeking new partners and is currently evaluating possibilities with the deputy director of education for the New York City Housing Authority, which works with forty-eight alternative high schools. "Dance stimulates language in all its variety," she confirms. "In responding to every kind of intelligence, art triggers many types of communication that make the moment on stage more vivid and more intimate to our individual lives." Like her colleagues throughout the field, Hill is determined to prevent the live performance from becoming an endangered species. "Prolonging the experience in the theater is the most effective tool we have," she says, "to open windows of perception, to arouse creative exploration and to connect young people with the confidence, discipline and daring that our artists exemplify."

While audience outreach is part of any artistic institution's marketing strategy, it is more a by-product than the goal of these three impressive programs. Now that battle lines have been drawn by politicians trying to tag artistic expression as elitist," the arts community and ordinary citizens are responding by an overwhelming affirmation of the belief that the arts are for everyone, that they express the diverse richness of American civilization. Expanding the modes and means of communication is essential in a democratic society if passions are to be voiced and expressed. By providing the schoolchildren of New York City access to music and dance, Carnegie Hall, American Ballet Theatre, and the Joyce Theater Foundation - among others - are reaffirming the idea that the arts are as basic to life as breath.

Camille Hardy is a contributing editor of Dance Magazine.