By Dr. Julianne De Sal
Director of Visual and Performing Arts

When I was five years old, my mother brought me to a local dance studio with the hope that artistic participation would help me overcome my intense shyness. My beloved grandmother had recently died, and I had become increasingly withdrawn and fearful of all social interaction. So there I was, in late May, popped into a ballet/baton/tap combo class at the Lorraine Judd Dance Studio. To this very day, I remember the large glass door and narrow entrance up three flights of stairs, so ominous was the anticipation of this experience for me. But when I put on my leotard and tights (all sizes were too large for me), and stood at the barre, I knew I was in a very special world, one in which I wanted to remain forever.

 

This was an important first arts experience for me because, like I said, it was late May and the class was in final rehearsals for the big June recital. After watching them practice their choreography, I begged Miss Lorraine to please let me participate, assuring her that I knew the steps and could perform them. Keep in mind this wasn’t exactly Appalachian Spring by Martha Graham, but she shook her head and told me I couldn’t possibly know the pieces, that her class had been working on them since September and I had been observing for only one week. In the end she reluctantly granted me a place—at the very end of line. Much to her amazement, I did know the choreography; I did execute the steps; by golly, I could dance.

 

Throughout my career as an arts educator, I have seen the pendulum of opinion swing back and forth about art’s efficacy and significance as a component of a liberal arts education. One truth remains: no one reaches adulthood and says, “Darn, I can really play this violin, or, I wish I didn’t know how to paint.” People do become older and lament that they never took that acting or photography class in high school, that they didn’t try to sing or dance, that they never passed through that glass door and walked up those three flights of stairs.

 

At Colorado Academy, we guide students through these passages. We believe that the visual and performing arts are an integral part of a liberal arts education and must be approached with a dedication to excellence. We embrace the two “E’s” of artistic study—exposure and experience. From Pre-K to grade twelve, students see, hear, and feel art in all forms; they are allowed to think and reflect, and to make personal determinations as to how that observation of art affords meaning to their lives. They are privileged to engage in an artistic study of their choice, on any level, through which teachers bring them to the brink of their own potential for greatness where they can demonstrate and communicate what it is they know to be true, with the arts as their catalysts and loyal companions. Our students celebrate art with generosity and compassion, and we, as their teachers and parents, are moved to deep emotion. They take our breath away.

 

As my California eyes give way to those of a Coloradan-in-training, I often pause at some poignant elevation on a weekend hike to gaze out at the snow-dappled landscape before me while I reflect upon the future of the arts at Colorado Academy.

I am honored to be your Director of Arts, grateful for the students I see on the stage, in the art studios, behind a camera or a cello, across gym floors and playing fields, in classrooms, and often just sitting on the sofa in my office eager to talk about arts opportunities and new ventures. The students are the reason I have sustained this career for all this time, and the impetus for all that is new, for what is to come. With great excitement I look forward to the initiation of a Dance program at CA, the continued evolution of programs in Music, Theater, Film, and Visual Arts as well as the addition of the Conservatory concept for advanced artistic study. Our students are richly textured human beings, eager to try new things, willing to put themselves at the end of that line and to take the journey up those seemingly infinite flights of stairs, because they instinctively know it is an artistic beginning they are celebrating. As their key adults, we watch them with awe, while right before our eyes, in those moments we dare to blink, they rise to the young artists that Picasso said they were meant to be.