Hillhouse Students Dazzle In Inaugural Arts Showcase

Top: Marilyn Robinson and members of the dance team rock it during their number. Bottom: the Hillhouse Band takes the stage. Lucy Gellman Photos.

As the sound of Lil Uzi Vert’s “What You Saying” drifted over the stage, Janeska Marrero stilled her mind, steadied her breathing, and snapped to attention. Around her, dancers posed in perfect contapasto, their hands on their hips. Marrero leaned in, hand-in-hand with freshman Marilyn Robinson, and began to move. As she rose, arms extending to their full wingspan, she could feel her grandmother’s spirit shifting right along with her, and eased into the dance.

Friday, an infectious, often danceable and earwormy joy came to James Hillhouse High School during an encore, all-school performance of its inaugural arts showcase, a collaboration among the visual, dance, music, and theater departments that has been months in the making. The brainchild of teachers Stefania Munzi, Marta Medina, Millette Nuñez, and Lily Echevarria, the performance marks the first time that artistic disciplines have come together, with a new focus on collaboration that teachers have started to grow this year. Josh Smith, who conducts the Hillhouse marching band, also came on board.

In roughly 80 minutes, it featured not just dance, music, and theater, but also a fashion show celebrating Latin American culture across a diaspora. It follows an arts-specific fundraiser that Munzi led earlier this year, to raise money for supplies that range from paint to basic set pieces to costumes for the dance team (those are still a dream deferred). She said that ticket sales from an opening reception last Wednesday brought in another $300.

“Performing in our fine art show gives young people the opportunity to explore alternatives that go beyond entertaining,” said Echevarria, who directed a live performance of “The Emperor's New Clothes” that the drama club has been working on for months. “It allows them to have the vision for a career in the performing arts, visual art, dance, or acting.”

From the moment curtains opened Friday, that hard work came to life, from student actors to members of the Hillhouse marching band who made the morning performance feel more like a pep rally. As classmates streamed into the auditorium, still shaking the sleep from their eyes, drama students buzzed with excitement in the wings, ready to transform the space into a centuries-old kingdom. Even before they had made their way onto the stage, a student peeked her head out, smiling wryly as she took in an audience of a few hundred peers.

“Give it up for the emperors!” co-emcee Ariana Jones cheered as the curtains opened, to six hand-painted cardboard columns, each strung with gold banners, that brought the stage back to antiquity. As villagers spoke amongst themselves—doing their best to project in a school that does not have working body mics—they began to build a whole world. This was a kingdom far far away, in which a fashion-obsessed emperor (Ryan Whitley) insisted on a wardrobe of shiny new clothes, despite the flashy ones that he already had.

On stage, Whitley looked around at his fellow actors, sizing them up. He studied himself in a mirror, covered in so many strands of Mardi Gras beads that they appeared to drip off of him. He cocked his head at an attendant in a too-big quilted jacket, and began to set the play into motion.

Students in the school's drama club.

In the audience, many students already knew how this story was going to go: a power-hungry man, too vain for his own good, was on his way to public humiliation—and he was probably going to get what he deserved. He puffed out his chest, a gold turban so bright on his head that it seemed it might blind the fellow actors. Nearby, a growing coalition of citizens were scheming to outsmart him. Making their way across the stage, students hatched their plan, watching carefully as the emperor made a trip to the local tailor.

Back in the audience, students seemed to know this wouldn’t end well; waves of knowing laughter drifted through the auditorium. The actors exchanged glances, then continued world-building from the stage.

Echevarria, who has worked at Hillhouse since 2023, said in an interview after the performance that that’s part of the point. When she works with students in the school’s drama club—many of whom are socially anxious or neurodivergent—she’s trying to push them outside of their comfort zones, to a creative place where they can think more expansively about the work ahead. That translates into life lessons whether they pursue drama or not; they leave the program better at knowing when to step forward, when to step back, and how to listen to each other more intentionally.

“It helps move them away from the sedentary lifestyle common in this day, and supports this generation in overcoming social insecurities, encouraging their ability to express themselves to the audience through a discipline as diverse as it is enriching,” she said.

As the story unfolded scene by scene, students from across all four grades wove in music, dance, and fashion, keeping an audience of their peers on its toes. When, for instance, band members entered the auditorium to cheers and applause, they set the tone for the morning, the brass clear and the woodwinds crisp on “I’ll Be There,” as the melody danced around the drums.

When “What You Saying” boomed out from a speaker somewhere backstage several minutes later, the energy was still infectious. On stage, dancers began to move in time with the music, their feet pounding the floor as arms soared above their heads, and then came back down to their waists. They weren’t still for even a second: they rocked back and forth, pushed their arms out, glided across the stage and kept going.

“The dance team has been a real honor to facilitate these past few months,” Nuñez said in a text message after the performance. “The students have shown growth not only in their movement practice but in the way they communicate, show up for each other and resolve conflicts. Together, we have co-created a community where stories and ideas can be shared, movement can be explored and boundaries are expanded.”

She gives students the space and permission “to say ‘I can’t do that yet,’” she added. It’s meant to help them learn that they may (and likely will) one day be able to do something that doesn’t yet feel right for their bodies.

“This allows them to understand that growth comes with practice and that things are achieved with time, patience and belief in oneself,” she said. “Creating a space for the students to perform is important because they take pride in what they do and have a desire to share it with the people they love. They deserve to have spaces where they can shine and share their gifts.”

Down the hall after the performance, several members of the dance team said that the showcase, like the team itself, had been thrilling for them—so much so that they hope to have another one next year. All of them praised Nuñez, a graduate of the New Haven Public Schools who returned to the district that raised her, and now leads the dance team after school in addition to teaching classes.

“I love dancing,” said Robinson, who is a freshman at the school. As a kid, she bounced “from studio to studio,” traveling between New York and New Haven when her parents had acting work in the city. At Hillhouse, she’s found her niche. “It’s the best way to express myself … I feel like I can express all of it because I can move my entire body.”

“For me, the dance team is like an escape from everything,” added Marrero. For years, she danced at Dance Unlimited in Hamden, but stopped in 2024, when her grandmother, Paula Vassell, passed away. Prior to that time, dance had been a ritual that the two shared together. When Marrero started taking classes at Hillhouse, Nuñez helped her rediscover her rhythm.

Beside Marrero, Bareilly Nunez echoed that enthusiasm. Growing up in the Dominican Republic, Nunez started to dance in preschool, when a ballet program came to her classroom. By the time she was seven or eight, she was immersed in it, from small classes to a large hip-hop festival that thrilled her. But when she came to the U.S. in 2018—first New York, and then New Haven—dance became more sporadic, because studios were far away.

“I like learning and being creative,” she said. “This teaches me new things.”

While dancers recharged in Munzi’s first-floor classroom, a bright gallery of student work beckoned from down the hallway, spanning all four grades. Just outside the auditorium’s double doors, Munzi and Medina had transformed the space into a feast for the eyes, with art that ranged from collage and pastel to painting on the windows and the walls.

In one work, a still life by senior Brandon Fullerton, a bowl of gem-colored fruit popped from the wall, with thin bananas the color of sunflowers, polite clusters of purple grapes, and apples that glowed ruby red. Nearby, Elisabeth Oppenheimer’s watercolor depiction of Congregation Beth El-Keser Israel came to life, the synagogue rendered in careful detail behind an undulating lawn outside.

Across the room, a mural from students in the school’s art club could have been stained glass, as sunlight streamed through the windows on which it was painted, turning orange paint ablaze.

Senior Nilofar Nazari, who is a student of Medina’s, posed beside the tiny cutout of a poodle, its nose facing the sky. Streaks and scribbles of orange, purple, and pink covered its frame, as if it had jogged nimbly right through a rainbow. Nazari, motioned to a second work, on which she had started with the outline with a duck, and then added a duckling because it seemed lonely.

“There’s a lot of talent here,” Munzi said with a smile. “It’s cool to see what these kids come up with.”