Betsy Ross Arts Magnet School | Culture & Community | Education & Youth | Arts & Culture | New Haven Public Schools | Arts & Anti-racism
Top: Christopher Lemieux's drama students. Bottom: Seventh graders studying with Nikki Claxton. Lucy Gellman Photos.
Inside Christopher Lemieux's drama classroom, eighth graders were caught between two worlds, trying to figure out if they could save Christmas. On one side of the makeshift stage, two friends stood by a decorated spruce, learning to apologize. On the other, their mothers talked amongst themselves, channeling a wisdom beyond their years. Only when Lemieux cut in, beaming at their progress, did they step out of the moment and back into middle school on Kimberly Avenue.
For the past two weeks, students at Betsy Ross Arts Magnet School (BRAMS) have kicked it into high gear for Winterfest, their annual end-of-year celebration of visual art, dance, theater, band, chorus and video at the school. After bringing the tradition back last year, several of the classes have leaned into a heavy, weighted world that students are seeing, working to find light in the darkness.
The result, often, is an hours-long student showcase that speaks profoundly to the complexity of the current moment, while still making space for some explosive joy.
"For me, it's so exciting," said Tavares Bussey, arts coordinator for the school, noting how the arts often build a bridge to social and emotional learning. "Last year, the first Winterfest was my entry into the Betsy Ross world, and I'm so excited to see the kids shine. I've been in a lot of schools, and to come here and see how the arts translate in the behaviors of our students is powerful."
Seventh grader Kayla DeJesus, who is studying visual arts at the school and designed the poster.
Last Thursday, that approach seemed to be everywhere, as students stepped quietly into their arts classrooms and transformed into off-book actors, pint-sized musicians-in-training, and storytellers ready to spin a narrative through movement. As dancers took on global conflict and emotional healing upstairs, old, well-worn carols, movie soundtracks and new scripts came to life one floor below.
In a theater classroom on the first floor, eighth graders Mikayla Williams and Dior Cooper were deep in a family drama, trying to find their way back to stability after the loss of a patriarch and string of financial hardships. The play, written by BRAMS teacher Daniel Sarnelli, tells the story of a family that has fallen on tough financial times, and needs a Christmas miracle—to the tune of $9500—to save the day.
In the play's world, which didn't seem so far from New Haven at all, family members orbited each other cautiously, sizing each other up for a moment. As Mikayla stepped forward, fellow students Chloé Lawson and Jacqueline Soares hung back, listening for an entrance. Dior took a deep breath, and primed herself to listen to a friend's stuttering apology. Then the scene rolled forward, family members learning to pool their resources as they navigated a new normal together.
Just as Mikayla reached for a line, Lemieux stepped in, raising his hands as if to remind them that he was there.
"A little bit quicker and a little bit snappier?" he suggested. The group took the scene back a few lines, and began to replay it. As two characters rekindled their friendship on one side of the floor-turned-stage, Chloé came to the foreground, her mind working through the next lines. In the script, she said, she tries to channel her mom, a single parent who works as the youth services coordinator at the New Haven Pride Center.
The approach worked: there was still almost a week to go until opening night, and already it felt seamless. In a short break before the end of class, Chloé said it is especially important to her to strike the right tone this year, because she knows the eighth graders are setting an example for their younger classmates.
"We need to be role models for the younger students who are doing this for the first time," added Jacqueline. "I really try to connect with the characters. I think about what it would be like if I was going through this in real life."
Down the hall, the first strains of Moana’s "How Far I'll Go" drifted from Angelo Vessichio's band classroom, the well-loved song carried on the brassy notes of a sixth grade baritone. Inside, sixth- and seventh-grade students slipped into the music, letting the notes transport them from a dreary Kimberly Avenue all the way to the South Pacific.
Next year, the school will be bringing back its tradition of a spring musical with Moana, Jr., and band students are working on getting a head start.
As Vessichio's hands fluttered through the air, students lifted their instruments, filling the room with music until it pressed up against the windows and slipped beneath the closed door and flowed into the hallway outside. At the far side of the room, sixth grader Aydan Furlow closed his lips tightly around the mouthpiece, and set the tone for the rest of the class. Beneath it, piano and woodwinds worked their way in slowly; a drumbeat rolled from the back of the room.
Vessichio listened intently for about 30 seconds, then held his hands up to stop the class. "Okay, that was good!" he said, smiling. "Let's take it from the beginning." Cradling the baritone for a moment, Aydan lifted it once more to his mouth, and began to play. Vessichio leaned in, listening to each part rise around him, and nodded intently.
For him, Aydan said before the end of class, the instrument has been transformative. When he came into BRAMS last year from Edgewood Creative Thinking Through STEAM Magnet School, he already played the piano and the drums, and originally wanted to hone his skills on the trumpet. Then he spotted the baritone. Now, he spends every free moment he can practicing, and often takes lunch in the band room. "Band is actually one of my places to calm down," he said.
Upstairs, that sense of calm radiated through Nikki Claxton's bright dance studio, as seventh graders flexed, pointed, lifted and stretched their way through warmups. On a laptop nearby, Claxton queued up a video set to Boyce Avenue's cover of "Imagine," letting the screen rotate through images of war across the globe.
In one photograph, the blown-out and flattened buildings of Gaza shifted into focus, without a human soul in sight. In another, plumes of smoke rose above Sudan, a city street in the foreground engulfed in flame. The screen shifted again, and this time, a mother wept as she held her child in her arms, both of them covered in blood and dust, the aftermath of conflict.
Claxton, who has never shied away from social justice in her dances, said she wanted to give students a chance to talk about, research, and reflect on the amount of global conflict taking place right now—and to use their craft to make room for hope in that vast darkness. As a mom and a longtime teacher in the New Haven Public Schools, she also knows firsthand that they are seeing the violence already. The studio is a space to dance through it.
"I wanted them to imagine world peace, imagine us loving each other," she said. As students started working on the choreography earlier this year, she asked each of them to research war in a different part of the world. "It's sad. No one wants to see genocide, bombing, fighting. They see it, and they wonder why there's so much war."
Around her, students fell into place, ready for the beginning of the dance as they placed their backs to the floor, and let themselves be still for the first time in hours. As music began to play, they rose by their torsos, leaning into their knees before lowering their bodies to the floor once more. In synchronous motion, they looked to the side, raised one arm, and turned to lift themselves into a hold, right toes pointed to the ceiling.
From a speaker, Boyce Avenue proclaimed No Hell below us/Above us only sky! and dancers turned, balancing on their flattened palms as they spread their fingers wide, looked up toward the ceiling, and flung their bodies all the way out. They melted into the floor and rose once more, suddenly aware of their own strength. Back on the screen, a photograph of protesters from the Civil Rights Movement froze in place for a moment, and then dissolved. In the studio, dancers began to move across the floor.
Following the dance, students gathered shoulder to shoulder, trading thoughts on the choreography. Anthonique Miller, who is in the seventh grade, said that it’s hard to escape the constant churn of visual culture around war; young people get much of their information from online sources like Instagram and TikTok, where it’s omnipresent.
“It’s emotional for me,” she said. “If I was in one of the wars, I would be scared. You don’t know when you can go outside, or if you’re gonna live. Maybe it [the dance] can encourage people to speak up.”
“I feel like this dance is very powerful for many people who have experienced war,” added Maegiani Davenport, whose older sister Maelle has also blazed a trail through BRAMS’ dance program. “Many people, their families have died during these wars, and it’s very sad.”
One classroom over, sixth and seventh-grade students in Hannah Healy's dance class spread out across the floor, ready to practice choreography for Michael Jackson's "Heal The World." Since October, they’ve been working under the watchful eye of Tayvon Dudley, an NHPS graduate who is filling in for Healy while she is on maternity leave.
To the first bars of the song—There's a place in your heart/And I know that it is love!—students rose from where they had been kneeling face down, arms rising and falling gently across the brightly lit room. They knelt and rose and knelt and rose again, a study in slowness and grace that melted into the floorboards. When at last the class rose, springing into movement, it was as if someone had allowed themselves to inhale for the first time in a long time.
This year, many of them said, dance has helped them process the reality of a new normal, from navigating a new year in middle school to holding onto the sheer amount of news happening in the world at any given moment.
“I feel like we’re really connected, really energized,” said seventh grader Maylin Bellamy. “I feel like the dance connects us not just to the school and to each other, but also to the world.”
“It’s not just about dancing,” chimed in fellow seventh grader Angelina Rodriguez. “It’s also about having emotions, making it feel like something.”
“Right,” said Tara Vott, who has a solo during the song. “There’s a difference between doing the choreography and dancing the choreography. In this dance, it’s kind of sad, but it’s also like, I believe we’re helping people through it.”
Bussey, who has helped organize Winterfest with BRAMS’ specialized arts teachers, said that emphasis on student voices is one that the school is committed to growing under his leadership, and as it continues to move beyond the social and emotional losses students may have experienced during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Stepping out into the hallway, he summoned seventh grader Kayla DeJesus, a student in visual arts who designed the poster for this year’s celebration. In the image, five mountains rise against a snowy landscape, a girl and her well-insulated dog trudging through in matching pink coats. As they reach the center of the frame, the girl looks around in wonder, her eyes giant and dancing against the white landscape. Large, pastel-colored polka dots bounce across the image.
Stepping out of a third period social studies class, Kayla said that the image came easily from her imagination, inspired by a mix of cartoons and artists that she follows on TikTok. As she drew, Kayla said, a whole narrative took shape, the drawing telling the story of a girl named Abigail and her dog, Snowball. This year, she said, she’s especially excited to represent Winterfest because the holidays are one of her favorite times of the year.
“For me, it’s about gifts but also about making memories with your family,” she said, adding that she finds that making art calms her. When she learned that her poster had been chosen for Winterfest, it came as a total surprise. “I just feel great.”