Kids & Education
Saratoga Performing Arts Center was founded on an educational mission. We are proud to offer a variety of programs that enable us to fulfill that mission by enriching and informing the lives of our friends and audiences.
Summer School of the Arts
A commitment to the future. From its beginning, SPAC has seen arts education as a vital part of its charter. Beginning in our second season with the School of Ballet , SPAC today works in cooperation with the New York State Education Department to host The Summer School of the Arts. This remarkable program includes the Schools of Dance, Orchestral Studies, and Jazz Studies.
State funding helps keep tuition low, while encouraging talented students from all economic levels. Each summer, more than 500 students are selected from some 8,000 applicants.
The students are teamed with top professionals, in highly focused sessions. This gives them the best training possible, as well as an introduction to what a life in the arts really entails. As School of Dance Artistic Director Damian Woetzel puts it, the school is "the kind of program I dreamed of as a kid. Total immersion, great classes every day, wonderful performances at night."
Saratoga Performing Arts Center is proud to take a leadership role in introducing the classical performing arts to youngsters in the greater regional community.
Class Action
Class Action was suggested and initially funded a decade ago by Saratoga Springs resident and SPAC Board member James Taylor, president and owner of Taylor Made in Gloversville. The program introduces schoolchildren to the pleasures of live performing arts. Class Action welcomes applications from schools on behalf of teachers and students in grades 5 through 7. The curriculum provided by SPAC incorporates intense study of a particular ballet or orchestral work in the students' coursework, and may include research on a composer, choreographer or scenery, and study of the historic period in which a work was composed, the life of the artists and the instruments. Teachers and students attend a presentation by a professional dancer or orchestra member in their local school.
SPAC hosts participating students, teachers and their chaperones at a classical performance at SPAC for two consecutive summers. Class Action graduates receive a SPAC Lawn Pass for classical performances, accepted through the summer of their junior year of high school. SPAC was founded on an educational mission and Class Action is a key in fulfilling it. The program also helps SPAC build a young audience to secure attendance in the future.
For more information, please call 518.584.9330, ext. 115 or e-mail at ldeschenes@spac.org
The Kids & Education Page is on spring recess. Mom & Dad are dragging us through every Smithsonian in Washington D.C. right now..... but when we get back, we'll have a cool, interactive Kids & Education Page that will give you lots of information and interesting tid bits on the ballet and orchestra to wow your friends.
If you are really keen to give us some ideas on ways to make this page particularly spectacular, send an e-mail to Jeff: jmeyer@spac.org
Thanks!