Conversations on Dance
https://www.conversationsondance.org/
Beginning in 2012, Core of Culture’s Director, Joseph Houseal and Director of Design, Liz Kidera, connected with lifelong Ballet patron, Nancy Lassalle in New York, to develop an educational resource for young dancers. Recognizing the need for a connection to classicism and the humanities among dancers studying Ballet, the group came up with a new way to get the material in front of the young dancers — an app. Ballet Society: Conversations on Dance is the first app of its kind to introduce a curriculum based on classicism and the allied arts, with an emphasis on Ballet. The goal of the app is to provide context for the history of classical Ballet and how it became a modern art form.
In October 2014, the first section of the Ballet Society app, Classicism was released. The event drew attention from across the dance community and Ballet schools within New York City. In April 2015, the second topic, Art, was released adding three new chapters of study for users. In Fall 2015 a new topic, Choreography, was released making for a total of three complete topics within the app. Since Autumn 2016, the School of American Ballet has been using the app in their Cultural Program, which includes trips to museums and performances, visits to the Dance Collection at the New York Public Library, moderated panels of choreographers workshopping studies of individual ballets, and three 2-hour seminars each semester using the app with its topics and images as the basis for conversation. This program of conversations is led by New York City Ballet dancer Silas Farley.
With the popularity of the conversations and content, a grant from the William Mullen Fund was given to Core of Culture to develop the app format into a web-based format accessible to all mobile media devices. This removes the problem of access and makes the series of conversations available to all students of ballet at no cost. The new web based version will be release in Spring of 2020. Tune in for more updates.