The highlight of my summer was school.
No, not a summer school where class attendance and homework completion are mandatory to compensate for failed credits. Not a summer school of waking up before sunrise, running miles and doing push-ups to garner a gym credit. Nor a summer school of learning way too many driving regulations and wondering who the real Tim of Capital Driving School is.
Rather than dreading school and dozing off in lectures, I and 98 others looked forward to class -- if you could call it that -- at the Governor's School for the Arts at West Liberty State College.
The Governor's School was introduced as Camelot, a utopia for creative writers, dancers, visual and digital media artists, thespians, vocalists and instrumentalists to practice and share their art with each other under the direction of professionals in each of their respective fields.
But rather than the typical arts classes that many of us were accustomed to, there were a few twists to our daily schedule and the seminars we attended.
As instrumentalists, my group already could be considered unorthodox. Seventeen students composed the ensemble ranging from those who play traditional orchestral instruments like clarinet and violin to others that seemed to deviate from the norm with their bass guitar and drum set. The music followed suit, including everything from standard repertoire Mozart to the contemporary, pseudo-improvisational piece "In C" by Terry Riley.
We were placed in chamber ensembles, requiring cooperation between members without a true "leader" (aka an adult). We also attended private lessons with master teachers and performed abbreviated recitals amongst ourselves.
Along with orchestra practice came opportunities to examine the effects of music on society. We discussed how music had transformed through the ages from what many consider "classical" pieces to more modern music and also how the mood of a somber movie -- "Platoon," in this example -- could not have been staged without Samuel Barber's "Adagio for Strings."
The Governor's Schools are known for their outside-the-box activities. For our group, that meant hosting a full-fledged African dance and drum team. By the end, we became the amateur drummers, and some students were even persuaded (OK pushed) on stage to dance, thrusting their bodies forward and back in an insinuatingly promiscuous hybrid of rave and the chicken dance.
Though all of us spent much of the day studying and broadening our talents in our own discipline, opportunities were given to try our hand at other art forms. Most memorable for me was dance, where we were given the opportunity of breaking the band-geek stereotype by showcasing our pliancy and poise.
As it is, balancing on one leg is a personal challenge, but when it comes to spelling out your name with a toe while dotting the i's with your tongue in an attempt to appreciate modern dance or stretching muscles I did not know even existed when learning the cardinal positions of ballet, I stood no chance. At least I was not alone because most of us failed. Miserably.
On a similar note, the program stressed collaboration between the arts, revealing how theatre would lack without solid script writing or how digital media could not have evolved into what it is without the fundamental principles of art that visual artists were using.
As instrumentalists, my group teamed with our musical counterparts, the vocalists, in arranging a piece -- the opening number to "Sweeney Todd" -- in our final performance. And with a newfound respect for the strenuous dance discipline, we also provided the music to the final dance performance.
The Governor's School for the Arts did so much more other than just refine our skills in a particular field. There were daily opportunities to witness pros working in their domain as we attended concerts including the Wheeling Symphony Orchestra and the Phoenix Jazz Project, saw a production of "West Side Story" and visited several modern art museums in the Pittsburgh area.
And though critics may argue that the Kennywood excursion was questionable (which, by the way, everyone agreed was absolutely necessary before our final performance), the three-week adventure synthesized an artistic aura that transformed all 99 high school students into beacons of creativity by the time of its doleful goodbye.
