Cultural Leap : Children Open Eyes, Minds to Ballet at Oxnard Arts Center

There was no screen and no popcorn.

There were no special effects, either.

And the superhero in this story turned out to be a slender heroine in a fiery, red tutu.

But the audience--800 students in kindergarten through high school, many of whom had never seen a live performance, much less a classical ballet--was dazzled.

“Their eyes were like saucers,” said Carol Barringer, a teacher at Piru Elementary School, who accompanied 62 kindergartners through second-graders at the Oxnard Performing Arts Center on Wednesday. “They have never seen anything like this. Not the scenery, not the costumes, not the movement. They were really excited.”

The performance of Igor Stravinsky’s ballet “The Firebird” was part of the Channel Islands Ballet Company’s Arts for Youth, a program that has brought performances to thousands of children in Ventura County over the past four years.

This year, students from Channel Islands High School participated in the performance. Half a dozen art students designed the makeup and painted the faces of several dancers in the troupe.

“I had the students do sketches of the faces,” said art teacher Erica Kern. “The dance instructor picked the ones she liked.”

The art students had never painted on people before and had only one chance to practice, during a rehearsal last week in a Ventura dance studio.

“It’s a lot harder than it looks,” said 16-year-old Steve Barton before the show. He carefully dabbed purple paint on the chin of a young dancer with a thin brush. “You have to have a really steady hand.”

With five minutes until curtain, the dressing room was buzzing with the excitement of the 26 student dancers. The four professionals, who have the lead roles, were getting ready in their own quarters.

“I’m hoping that the performance will give the students an experience they will remember,” said Ariana Simpson, a junior at Ventura High. Ariana, who is only 15, has been dancing with the Channel Islands Ballet for nine years. “At first, they are going to moan and groan. But hopefully some will get it.”

That is precisely what happened.

As the lights went out in the auditorium, the students whistled and screamed. But slowly, as the music rose in intensity, their voices started quieting down.

By the time the curtain rose, with Firebird and Ivan, a Russian prince, pirouetting around each other in a magical forest, the students were silent. And except for bursts of applause during particularly athletic sequences, the students remained so through the 45-minute performance.

“Firebird’s costume was so pretty. It was sexy,” said 17-year-old Akie Matsushita afterward. Akie, a junior at Channel Islands High, had never seen a ballet before. “I liked it better than the movies. It’s more real,” she said.

The ballet company donated an illustrated book of the “Firebird” story to each class that attended so teachers could familiarize their students before the performance, said Suzanne Drace, a board member of the Channel Islands Ballet.

“We read the book and talked about it,” said Kimberly Van DeMark, who teaches fifth and sixth grades at Driffill Elementary in Oxnard. Her students, the majority of whom speak little English, will write a summary of the “Firebird” story.

Another Driffill teacher, Sharon Jones, took a slightly different approach.

“We talked about the stamina it takes to be a dancer,” Jones said. “I want them to appreciate that the dancers are both artists and athletes.”

FYI

The Channel Islands Ballet will be performing for the public Saturday and Sunday at the Oxnard Performing Arts Center. For information and tickets, call (805) 486-2424 or 648-4430.