Studying the performing arts is an integrated academic and co-curricular learning experience where students learn both the concepts and skills that are common to all performing arts disciplines. Students engage their creative sensibilities on a daily basis, in tandem and in concert with their academic lives.

Stoneleigh-Burnham students take at least two trimesters of arts offerings per year.

Middle School Chorus

Middle School Chorus is a vocal music ensemble open to middle school students of all experience levels. Students learn and perform choral arrangements of a wide variety of styles of music, while exploring vocal technique, singing in harmony, and blending and working together as an ensemble. Middle School Chorus frequently explores musical concepts through play, including music games and creative warmups. Students also learn a strong foundation of music literacy skills, including learning to read pitch and rhythm and training their musical ears.

Dance 7

Dance 7 is a class in which students explore kinesthetic awareness and creative expression through movement. Students learn fundamentals of jazz, ballet, and contemporary forms. To learn dance is to learn dance history, so students also investigate the larger cultural contexts of each form’s origin and current iteration. Dance 7 members view different examples of dance in performance and reflect on the ways dance can impact their daily lives. Students also develop their performance skills and share a dance in formal or informal concerts. 

Music 7

Music 7 is a class where students learn to listen to and discuss different styles of music, including classical, jazz, film, and popular music. Students learn basic music literacy skills, including reading rhythm and identifying note names on the treble and bass clefs. Students also explore music through creating projects and presentations, including creating their own songs in GarageBand. 

Theater 7

Theater 7 is a class where students explore acting, improvising, and creative thinking and writing. Students learn the fundamentals of theater by exploring the different jobs in a theater production and learning important theater terminology, including stage directions. Students practice learning and delivering monologues, building characters, and writing scenes and dialogue. The class concludes with a final project where students perform scenes and monologues they have written as a class. 

THEATER 8

In Theater 8, students will practice character study, scene writing, and exploring movement and expression on stage. Students will work on projecting their voices and articulating to an audience, and will learn to get into character and use their voices and movements intentionally. We will learn to block monologues and scenes on stage and will practice memorizing scripts and blocking. The class will culminate in a final performance. 

Dance Performance Project (DPP)

Dance Performance Project (DPP) is a student-led choreography ensemble. Students devise their own choreographic projects and develop their directorial and performance skills. Dancers share their choreography in formal and informal concerts. 

International Baccalaureate (IB) DANCE

In IB Dance, students develop their movement technique and their choreographic skills. Students also learn about the dance elements of time, space, and energy. Dancers study dances and cultures from outside their own perspective and write a comparative paper about two dance forms: one familiar, and one unfamiliar. Students choreograph two or three dance pieces and share their compositions and creative process at an annual concert. Additionally, dancers learn one, two, or three dance pieces to showcase their movement technique, interpretative ability, and performance skills.

Dance Repertory

Dance Repertory is an ensemble-based, process-oriented course. Students develop group dance pieces through weekly rehearsals over the course of a year. Dancers learn to be active, generative artists within a rehearsal process and engage in multiple collaborative processes. Students share these compositions in formal and informal concerts.

Upper School Chorus

Upper School Chorus is a vocal music ensemble open to upper school students of all experience levels. Students learn and perform choral arrangements of a wide variety of styles of music, while exploring vocal technique, singing in harmony, and blending and working together as an ensemble. Students also learn a strong foundation of music literacy skills, including learning to read pitch and rhythm and training their musical ears.

Octet

Octet is an auditioned vocal music ensemble open to upper school students. Students in Octet explore challenging choral and a cappella arrangements, often singing with two or three voices on a part. Octet singers also expand their knowledge of musical literacy skills through consistent practice with reading, dictating, and improvising music. 

Rock Band

Rock Band is open to any interested student regardless of experience. Students propose and select music to learn and rehearse, participate in creating arrangements, and may perform in any or all of the six or more shows we hold each year. This is a full-year course open to both middle and upper school students. 

World Music

Students explore music music cultures through the four components of a music-culture model which includes ideas and beliefs, activities, repertories, and material culture. Students engage in how to study, play, dance, and listen to music from different cultures.

Big Band

Big Band is open to students who play traditional and jazz band instruments. Students must be at least at a beginner to intermediate playing and score reading level to join. Students develop individual and ensemble instrumental techniques through the study and performance of a variety of musical styles. They perform at all Performing Arts concerts and sometimes at other school and outside school functions. Throughout the year, students learn band and jazz band repertoire. Styles covered include, but are not limited to, jazz standards, popular, funk, Latin, rock, and holiday music.

Chamber

Chamber Music is a performance class designed for students who have some instrumental experience and are interested in studying and performing chamber music. A variety of ensembles may be formed according to instrumentation and ability. Students develop individual and ensemble instrumental technique and perform at concerts, school functions, and outside events. Styles covered can include but are not limited to classical, baroque, romantic, modern, Latin, popular and more.

International Baccalaureate (IB) Music

This practical course encourages and fosters the acquisition of knowledge and understanding of diverse musical material, and development of musical competencies and related musical skills in the roles of performers, creators, and researchers through the practical processes of exploring, experimenting and presenting. It introduces students to a wide range of music from familiar and unfamiliar contexts that expands their horizons and provides new and exciting musical stimuli for their own work. To achieve this, the course uses a framework of areas of inquiry and contexts. Students broaden their knowledge by engaging with diverse musical material from personal, local and global contexts. They develop their musical identities by considering music and its functions in four areas of inquiry (AoIs).