Performing Arts & Music Program
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Music Center
WNS has developed a relationship with the Los Angeles Music Center to aid us in our efforts to provide our student body with a variety of multi-cultural performance genres from around the world. We begin in kindergarten by using rhythm and body movement as a fundamental building block for performance. This year we are proud to welcome Noah Andzongo from the Music Center; he is an experienced choreographer, dancer and musician from Cameroon, Africa. He introduces our kindergarten and first grade classes to Cameroon rhythmic dance and drumming.
Second and third grades are introduced to the graceful martial arts dance of Capoeira by our own experienced faculty member Renee Scachetti. Fourth and fifth grades will be participating in a Music Center provided workshop, Diavolo, which builds on students' knowledge of movement and dance and teaches them how to combine their efforts into team-building choreographed dance, using trust exercises and dynamic dance, or as Diavolo likes to call it, “learning to fly”!
The Music Center also provides us with two professional performances a year in which students are able to see what years of focus, discipline and passion for the arts can lead to as a professional performance artist. This year we are excited to welcome the Tinkers, who perform jigs and reels from the Scottish and Irish Highlands, and the Kahurangi Maori Dance Theatre of New Zealand, who will perform for us dance and music inspired by the heritage of the Maori people and other Polynesian tribes.
Each grade, kindergarten through fifth, benefits from engaging in a variety of performance building blocks such as projection, movement, self-awareness, rhythm and team-building skills. We set a foundation with the Music Center so that when our students reach middle school they are already prepared to engage in full-length productions as well as creating their own original performances.
Middle School Performing Arts
Once WNS students reach middle school, performing arts with Miss Allen becomes a part of their weekly curriculum. Middle school students are expected to observe, practice and execute a foundation of fundamental acting skills and dramatic processes throughout the year. Each middle school grade level curriculum incorporates an overlying theme, which results in a few small productions throughout each year. It is our goal that WNS students become more engaged with the process and conceptual creation and expression of the dramatic arts rather than be stressed by the pressure of production.
Sixth grade reviews the fundamental skills of performance using the art of puppetry to enhance their expression through movement, voice and stage presence.
Seventh grade uses the brilliance of William Shakespeare to explore classical Renaissance performance skills sonnets, and Shakespearean plays. The culmination of all these elements is a seventh grade-produced Shakespearean-themed variety show.
Eighth grade engages in scene study and monologue study to prepare them for high school expectations in public speaking and presentation skills. Eighth graders also write, direct and perform their own theatrical creations in addition to personally selected scenes.
Each year middle schoolers have the option to perform in a musical theater elective where we work hard to produce a full-length musical production at the end of each school year. The performance is student produced with a large cast, including a tech crew that conducts lights and sound, special effects, set and costume design, as well as building sets and costumes. This year we are proud to produce Into the Woods.
Music Program
Students in developmental kindergarten through fifth grade take part in an active music program based on the philosophy of music education developed by Carl Orff. In our classrooms, students sing and move to the music and play instruments ranging from drums and xylophones to other percussion. From such in-depth involvement with hands-on music making, the students formulate their own understandings of music, learning terminology and how to apply it, which leads to more and more student creations and arrangements of music. Ultimately the students will be capable of creating their own melodies, as well as have the ability to arrange accompaniments for those melodies using the instruments, harmonies and rhythms they have learned.
In younger grades the focus is on developing a sense of beat, which is crucial to communal music making. Students do that by walking, hopping and skipping to the beat, as well as playing instruments to the beat. Creating music to go with stories is part of the way music is so integral to the students' language development. Older children develop music-reading skills playing the recorder in third, fourth and fifth grades.
We have an after-school ensemble, the WNS Recorder/Orff Ensemble, which is devoted to performing at the highest level and does concerts both on and off campus. The group plays xylophones, drums and recorders and sings choral music.
