NYS Baroque presented an all-day workshop for teachers on Baroque Music, Politics, and Culture in the spring of 2005, funded through the office of Assemblywoman Joan Christensen. This provided the teachers with materials they could build on and integrate with the curriculum. Teachers at the workshop participated in this project. NYS Baroque helped the teachers to enrich and focus the students’ learning experience in the areas of cultural history and the arts.
The students learned details about life in the 17th and 18th centuries. Getting the students up to dance (some of them in costume), with the resulting social interactions helped the students to make connections between the arts and their other information about the period. They worked with musicians, a dancer, and a costume designer to better understand the way social norms and political realities of the Baroque period were expressed in contemporary arts.
Baroque dance specialist Peggy Murray leads students in an 18th
century contredance on the auditorium stage.
Peggy shows a new step to students.