bringing inspiration to your classroom
Whether this year you find yourself teaching on site, online, or at home, American Midwest Ballet offers a selection of resources and downloadables to help add the magic of dance to your classes!
GOING SOLO – FIND YOUR SONG (FREE!)
An ongoing initiative that releases new dance films every few weeks, Going Solo embraces the challenges of dancing during a global pandemic by combining talented artists with renowned choreographers. Students are invited to watch a Going Solo work (or several!) and pair it with our Find Your Song study guides to engage with movement, critical thinking, and creative expression.
Going Solo Study Guides: Find Your Song – These guides provide supplementary information and enrichment activities to help students get more out of the ballet experience. Going Solo study guides are available for elementary school and middle school/high school levels.
Access problems? Contact education@amballet.org.
AMERICAN MIDWEST BALLET WORKSHOPS (FREE!)
Get students moving with a professional ballet artist-educator
American Midwest Ballet’s workshops include an entertaining demonstration by professional dancers, followed by an insider’s look at creating a dance production, learning about storytelling through dance, and taking part in exciting movement activities. Workshops are customizable for every skill level and meet many standards outlined in the Fine Arts Standards for Dance by the Nebraska and Iowa Departments of Education.
Contact education@amballet.org to schedule your free workshop today!
- Introduces students to ballet and the performing arts
- Kinesthetic learning with arts focus
- Customizable for every skill level
- Synchronous instruction for students at home or in the classroom
supplementary enrichment videos
Stage makeup helps dancers dramatize their facial features and expressions so that their characters’ emotions communicate clearly from the stage. Compared to ordinary makeup, stage makeup is much more intense! In this video, American Midwest Ballet professional dancer Claire Goodwillie talks about how dancers select their stage makeup and demonstrates her own transformation from street to stage.
How do ballet dancers perform fast, complicated steps and turns while balancing on the ends of their toes? Careful training and practice are essential, but dancers also have another tool to help with this kind of dancing: specialized footwear called pointe shoes. In this video, American Midwest Ballet professional dancer Claire Goodwillie shows you how these shoes are constructed and what dancers must know to select and use them.
Professional dancers sometimes have long workdays, beginning with technique class in the morning, followed by rehearsals, and then possibly a performance in the evening. How do they make sure they have everything they need? For one thing, they’re famous for carrying giant dance bags! Company dancer Claire Goodwillie gives us a tour of her bag, which she admits is “sort of like falling down the rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland…”