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Wide-eyed Gabrielle Velez, a fifth grader at John W. Bonner Elementary School, sat on the floor of one of the rehearsal rooms at the Nevada Ballet Theater watching intently as three professional dancers enacted a scene out of "Giselle."
She watched as the three dancers, two men and one woman, used almost the entire room gracefully jumping and spinning; and the ballerina walking and dancing on the top of her toes.
"I didn't expect it to be that good," Gabrielle said. "I thought this would be boring because I'm not really into the things like ballet, but I didn't think they danced like that. She was always on her toes, and they can jump really high too."
Fellow student Devin Gurko agreed.
"I didn't want to come, but now that I've seen them dance, I want to see Act II," he said. "No, now I really want to see the whole thing."
That's the kind of reaction the Summerlin Children's Forum board members were hoping for when they awarded a grant that paid for 80 fifth graders from Bonner to visit the ballet theater to get a behind-the-scenes look into a professional ballet theater.
The grant paid for bus transportation for the students; color and printing of the curriculum, which included information about "Giselle" for students; 10 copies of "The Ballet Called Giselle" for the school's library, four free tickets that were raffled off for students and coupons for "Giselle," which the theater performed Oct. 17-19 at the Judy Bayley Theatre at UNLV.
The Summerlin Children's Forum gives monthly grants to both private and public Summerlin schools and youth organizations that apply. The goal of the board is to enhance the experience of being a young person in Summerlin by helping schools with projects not funded by the school budget, said Tom Warden, who is chairman of the board.
"This was appealing because it's bringing culture to students in a way that would really make it interesting," Warden said. "This was a hands-on, behind-the-scenes look that serves to inspire young people and does a good job of acquainting them to a cultural icon in our community."
The Education and Outreach Division of the ballet theater applied for the grant to educate Bonner students on what goes on before all the lights, camera and action of a production.
"We wanted to demystify the mystery," said James Canfield, interim artistic director of the ballet theater.
This was the first time a large group of students visited the ballet theater's facility. Canfield said that using the facility as an outreach and educational tool is helpful in showing the backstage aspect of productions. The students learned about set and costume design, practiced routines of the dances and watched a dance scene, which taught how dancers use pantomime to tell the story of the ballet.
During the wardrobe lesson, wardrobe mistress for the company, Christine McInnis, held up a hard-toe ballet shoe and banged it on the floor. The loud noise startled the students.
"See how hard they really are?" McInnis asked the class. "Imagine dancing on that for two hours straight."
The children were shocked to learn that ballet dancers can go through three to four pairs a week and that a pair costs about $75.
Because "Giselle" is based on the late 1500s, the Renaissance-style costumes got a lot of attention from the students. The favorite thing for the students to try on was the men's wig and frilly collar.
When Kyle Anderson tried on the brunette, chin-length hair wig with bangs, students around him laughed immediately.
"You look good in it," joked Gabrielle.
McInnis also showed the class the tricks behind the props. She held up what looked like a wood bucket full of grapes. She tapped on the bucket to show it was made of paper mache, then instead of pulling out a bunch of grapes, she took off a thin layer of plastic grapes that fit on the top of the bucket, creating the illusion of a bucket full of grapes.
"This is so dancers don't need to carry around a heavy bucket," she said, showing the class. The response of most of the students was "cool."
For future school or youth organizations that apply for a grant from the Summerlin Youth Forum, Warden said the board encourages them to use the money for community service projects.
"We want the whole community to benefit from the grants," he said.
Jenny Davis can be reached at 990-8921 or [email protected].
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