How Northbridge students benefit from our unique performing arts partnership with Juilliard

How Northbridge students benefit from our unique performing arts partnership with Juilliard The Juilliard School is a world leader in performing arts education. The Northbridge International School Cambodia collaboration with Juilliard provides our students with high quality learning experiences, and also provides high-level professional training and personal development opportunities for our teachers.

The Juilliard School is a world leader in performing arts education. The Northbridge International School Cambodia collaboration with Juilliard provides our students with high quality learning experiences, and also provides high-level professional training and personal development opportunities for our teachers.

This semester, as part of our collaboration with the Juilliard School, we welcomed Juilliard curriculum specialists Aurea Tomeski (drama), Brian Drye (music) and Hilary Easton (dance).

Hilary, Aurea and Brian worked virtually with students demonstrating lessons from the Juilliard Creative Classroom, an online collection of educational resources designed to enhance and supplement our curricula.

They also spent time with our performing arts teachers providing professional training and support in developing our Performing Arts programme at NISC.

Drama

Aurea Tomeski's virtual Drama visit to the Grade 8 and 9 students was a great success, allowing them to be fully engaged with the content that Juilliard provides for Northbridge.

Grade 8 students learned about clowning and acknowledging the audience when breaking the fourth wall, while our Grade 9 students learned about asides to the audience, what they can convey and how they can be included in their ten minute plays. The Drama students are looking forward to future visits from Aurea!

Aurea also offered a Community Engagement Masterclass to families of Northbridge. Parents participated in a Juilliard Creative Classroom lesson focussed on storytelling. 

Music

The virtual music visit provided a great way for Northbridge students to engage with the Juilliard Programme, and remain connected to each other through the power of music.

Grade 9 students spent time exploring cycles and repeated patterns in music, and how music can be used to represent words. Grade 4 students got to experience a new instrument from China and they learnt how to create symbols for various techniques. The students then could create symbols for their own instruments at home and got to perform them.

Brain Drye led a Master Class for some of our instrumental students. The session was watched by supportive parents. Inspired by the works of Thelonius Monk students explored improvisation techniques in a creative, engaging and rewarding session.  As we look to build more opportunities for performance in our Music programme, keep a lookout for more activities like this next semester!

Dance

Working with Ms Hilary is always a treat, and this virtual visit was no exception. Our focus was introducing the Juilliard's ‘Construct a Dance’ project. 

We began exploring the idea of unison, of moving through space but with a sense of togetherness and an awareness of our fellow dancers. Then came the poses, the Juilliard have created a series of dance pictures for students to emulate.

These poses require engagement of the core muscles, focus and balance. After learning the poses our students worked in groups to develop their own transitional movements.

We are so lucky that Ms  Hilary is going to make a virtual return next semester to see where we are with our Construct a Dance pieces, and to also guide our students in the next stage of creating this whole school project.