Ballet Arizona Brings a Holiday Tradition to Archway Veritas
Archway Veritas December 17, 2024 -
Scholars at Archway Veritas recently had the privilege of experiencing Ballet Arizona’s professional performance of scenes from “The Nutcracker Suite” on the stage of the academy’s very own Lund Center for Performing Arts.
Ballet Arizona, the Southwest’s premier, non-profit ballet institution, dedicated to educating, creating, and performing remarkable classical and contemporary ballet, has brought several performances to the academy in the past, but there is something about this classic ballet that rings in the holiday season. This tradition continues to be a highlight of the school year, as students eagerly anticipate seeing a ballet they have studied, and love brought to life on stage.
“The Nutcracker Suite” was first performed in 1892 in St. Petersburg’s Marinsky Theatre in Russia. The music is by Pyotr (Peter) Ilyich Tchaikovsky and the original choreography was by Marius Petipa, although it has now been re-choreographed many, many times all over the world, including at Ballet Arizona.
The music classes at Archway Veritas plays a role in preparing students for these experiences. “Seeing the fine arts in action in this way is such a great opportunity for our students to really experience Beauty and see it firsthand in such a different way than they get to experience it in our hallways with the art or in art class or in music class. But they’re actually seeing it at a professional level,” explained Erin Thorn, the academy’s Dean of Academics and Culture. “I think our music teachers do such a wonderful job of actually specifying different composers and talking to the students about the historical aspects of the music they’re learning about. So sometimes in ballet, the students will recognize names or even recognize pieces of music that they’ve studied in their classrooms in music, which is really fun for them.”
Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker Suite” has become a holiday tradition for many of our academies, as the opening scene is set on Christmas Eve. Last year, we told you how Great Hearts Harveston Music Teacher, Stuart Coles, shared that he had introduced his music classes to the masterpiece. “With entering the winter holidays we’ve been studying Pyotr Tchaikovsky and ‘The Nutcracker Suite,’ and I had a student come up to me with a lot of excitement before class saying that they talked to their parents, and they got tickets to go see ‘The Nutcracker Suite.’” Coles was particularly encouraged that he was able to spark his student’s interest in the piece.
The live performances at Archway Veritas are made possible, in part, by the generosity of Great Hearts families, faculty, and staff who participate in the Arizona Tax Credit program. Contributions through this initiative help fund enriching opportunities like ballet and symphony performances, which expose students to art and music of the highest caliber.
The value of these experiences goes beyond mere entertainment. They inspire students to see and appreciate Truth, Goodness, and Beauty in the world around them. “They not only get to witness just aesthetic Beauty and hear Beauty and recognize that there is so much Goodness in what they’re seeing,” said Thorn. “They just get to take it in and enjoy it.”
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