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Step Inside Arts at the Upper School
by Dylan Howlett

 

In The Pocket Music Ensemble — Michael Meyer’s Music Room

A cacophonous warmup of brass and guitars and vocal cords has given way to quiet in Michael Meyer’s music room. Few things can pierce this serenity quite like the distinctive guitar and bass lines in “25 or 6 to 4,” the 1970 rock standard from the band Chicago. It’s one of the songs that In The Pocket — DA’s auditioned musical ensemble that performs popular music of all genres — will rehearse this Friday morning. They can’t start without Smith Hill ’24, their lead guitarist, or Trevor Hoyt — DA’s director of technology who teaches the ITP ensemble course with Meyer — launching into that singular thrum. Bum-bum-bum-bum-bum. Bum-bum-bum-bum-bum. Bum-bum-bum-bum-bum. Soon their notes are accompanied by an ascending trill of brass — of saxophones and trumpets — and the rhythmic kick of Siddharth Srivats ’25 on drums. One more brass flourish signals the entrance of vocalist Max Tendler ’24, who features in the song alongside fellow vocalists Kenna Wells ’24, Riley Auman ’24 and Stella Edwards ’25. Searching for that break of day / Searching for something to say.

Meyer has plenty to say after the ensemble’s initial run-through. “Let’s talk about a bunch of things,” he says, and the longtime Upper School music teacher and Class of 2025 advisor launches into a thoughtful critique. The ending shifts downward into a slower tempo far too abruptly at measure 130; the group should start it one measure earlier. In measures 132 and 133, Meyer notes, the horn line shouldn’t take a breath between whole notes. He brings the ensemble back to measure 121 to rehearse the slower transition. “THAT made me so much happier,” he says.

The untrained ear hears a nearly flawless rendition that is ready for ITP’s spring concert in April. Meyer — whose course load includes AP Music Theory — is not an untrained ear. He can detect even the most imperceptible of hitches, and the smallest of openings for improvement. He turns his attention to trumpeter John McGowan ’24 and measure 81. “Just because it’s high doesn’t mean it has to be squeezed,” Meyer says. McGowan can stand to sustain his pitch within the dynamics of the crescendo and decrescendo. And in measure 41, Meyer says, the horn line sounds frayed on the sixteenth notes. “They’re not that important,” Meyer says. “You don’t have to hammer each of them.”

The vocalists, too, receive notes. Meyer scrutinizes the heaviness of the vowel sound in the lyric “sitting cross-legged on the floooooooor.” He hears it turning from a B-major into a B-minor. The ensemble runs through the song once more to solidify the fixes they’ve just discussed. As measure 121 gives way to a far more gradual decline in tempo, and as the final brass notes fade away, Meyer smiles. “That was a way better runthrough than the first time,” he says. Even the most gifted musicians, the most confident performers, need refocusing — around technique, around timing, around togetherness — amid the din of performance.

“It’s easy to get off and running and not think about the things,” Meyer says to his students. “So remember to think about the things.”

 

Intermediate Dance — Laci McDonald’s Dance Studio

In one corner of Laci McDonald’s studio, a trio of Upper Schoolers has dissolved into hysterics. They have attempted, in vain, to prop up one of their group members like a wheelbarrow to move from one part of their routine to another. Around them, four other trios are in various states of athletic and kinetic artistry: tumbling, contorting, lifting and leaping, all in an effort to find the answer to an elusive question. How does one best move, or dance, from Point A to Point B?

The trio-based routines form the culmination of a unit about basing, or providing support for lifts, shapes and other dance movements. Basing requires students, McDonald says, to consider how they’re connecting with the floor, and how they’re connecting with each other. They must share weight, and space, to find a common equilibrium, and to finagle shapes that fit each partner both artistically and physically. McDonald implores her students to listen with their bodies. And as they do, the choreography emerges.

The Upper Schoolers scribble their thoughts in notebooks before stumbling through an idea in their designated area of the studio. McDonald circulates throughout the studio and offers her troubleshooting support. There is pushing, and prodding, and laughter as the trios discover shapes both seamless and ill-fitting. They push each other to consider how to move from one position to the next: sitting to standing, back to back, holding a partner aloft on their back before tumbling into another position. McDonald asks her students to be more specific, more descriptive, in their choreographic writings. If you find something that works, write it down immediately, McDonald says. Listen to your bodies, she says again, and her students open their ears to contortions that make the most sense for themselves, and for each other.

 

Intro to Photography — Elisabeth Effron’s Classroom

During the fall semester, Elisabeth Effron taught her Intro to Photography students the art of digital photography and editing. She wanted to help her students feel successful, to learn the intricacies of aperture and exposure in a medium that felt familiar. The spring semester, however, finds students at the opposite end of the spectrum: capturing, and developing, traditional film.

On this weekday afternoon, the Upper School photography room appears less like a studio and more like a science lab. Students have taken photos according to several prompts, and it’s time for the laborious yet rewarding development process. It starts with exacting tedium. Students plunge their arms through a portable darkroom bag that deprives their film canister of even a morsel of light, which would spoil the reel. They grasp, reach and fiddle with the film until they can successfully cut it from the roll. So begins an 18-minute chemical treatment process made possible by a new sink that was installed in Effron’s room during winter break. Outfitted with temperature-controlled faucets, the sink can comfortably fit six students — the same capacity for the studio’s darkroom, which is separated from the rest of the classroom by a revolving door.

Once students follow seven detailed steps within the development progress, they hang up their film to dry in a specially designed cabinet. The delicacy, and vagaries, of film are unavoidable. “If you even lay it down wet,” Effron reminds Larry Yon ’27 as he completes the chemical process, “it will scratch.” He frowns. “I know!” she says empathetically. “It’s really delicate, right?” Alice Haney ’27 encounters the same conundrum when she emerges from the darkroom with two enlarged photos replete with spots and disparate lighting. Effron says the blemishes were the direct result of cleaning, or not cleaning, her negatives during the chemical process. “It’s OK!” says Effron, who shuttles back and forth between the darkroom and the chemical station. “It’s a good lesson in general.”

Dried film allows students to enter the revolving door of the darkroom, devoid of light save for a dull orange bulb that lends the room an ethereal glow. The complexity of the instruments within feels akin to splitting an atom. But Aidan Jones ’25 is self-assured. A classmate has missed several days due to illness, and Jones walks her through the steps — just as Effron did for the whole group in previous classes. “Ms. Effron makes everything easy,” he says. Students drop negatives into an enlarger, which allows students to manipulate the focus and contrast of their image. Three trays of additional chemicals sit in the room, each of them allowing students to develop a print of their photo, then stop it at their preferred contrast or tone before the “fixer” tray stabilizes the image. The journey from reel to finished image — meticulous, time-intensive, scientific — couldn’t be more diametrically opposed to the world of smartphone photos or digital cameras. Jones wouldn’t have it any other way.

“If I worked harder on it,” he says, “then it means more to me.”

 

Acting Studio — James Bohanek’s Classroom & Kenan Auditorium

James Bohanek has a question for his Acting Studio class: “What road sign are you today?” It’s 8:15 a.m. on a Wednesday morning, and his students have arranged themselves in a circle on the stage in Kenan Auditorium. The question from the Upper School drama teacher serves as the day’s check-in, and it inspires answers featuring signs across a spectrum of oddity or disrepair: a sticker on a stop sign, a bent “wrong way” sign. The exercise gives way to “Chase,” a warm-up game in which each student leads with a line of dialogue — accent, content and physicality entirely up to them — and every other student in the circle, Bohanek included, must deliver their own rendition of the line.

“Good day, my lord! How art thou?” “How far can you go?” “Sit! Sit! Fetch!” “My agony is far more painful than yours.” “Eh, not sure.” “Oh, my God! It’s snowing!”

It is a prelude to the purpose of today’s class: preparing, rehearsing and perfecting a scene that students will perform in pairs. Bohanek provided general feedback during last week’s rehearsals, and he’ll provide more specific notes today. Before everyone disperses, each pair meets to determine their goal for today’s practice. Bohanek asks them to share. “Be a little more off-book.” “Being more in the imaginary circumstance.” Incorporate your notes.” “Work on memorization.” “Work on it in chunks.” “Make it real.”

The scene partners choose their rehearsal space. Alexis Rodriguez ’24 and Julian Pasos ’26 leave Kenan Auditorium for the quiet of Bohanek’s empty classroom. They clear furniture from the middle of the room in preparation of performing “Instincts,” a 10-minute play by Jason Milligan. The scene features Andy and Frank, two friends who find themselves in a jail cell in the early hours of New Year’s Day. “All right,” says Rodriguez, who plays Andy. “Let’s run it from the top.”

The scene begins with Pasos, who plays Frank, delivering a histrionic monologue about a home run he once hit in a baseball game. When he starts engaging with Andy, however, the mood turns from wistful to tense as they confront the severity of their choices. The first runthrough leaves Rodriguez and Pasos feeling indifferent about their performance. They review all of the beats, or pauses, in the scene. They reread the script to make sure they have their lines correct, and they revisit the baseball monologue. “Maybe read it slower?” Rodriguez says. “Yeah, because I’m reminiscing,” Pasos says. “And like [Mr. Bohanek] was saying,” Rodriguez says, “maybe act it out more. That would help.”

Pasos stands up and pantomimes a sweeping home run swing. “Run it back,” Rodriguez says. “Keep running it.” And so they do. Pasos slowly injects more emotion into his lines, which in turn plays into the rage that Rodriguez’s character experiences. Rodriguez wants more. “You just killed someone, and now you’re talking about Doughnut Boy and his puffy little face?” Rodriguez says, referring to the baseball monologue. “It would make me so mad.” Pasos realizes he has been delivering his side of the argument from a chair. “He’s not a guy who sits,” he says. They redo the scene and stand to confront each other. Rodriguez shakes his head. “You’re not actually annoying me,” Rodriguez says. He taps his chest. “Annoy me.” Pasos tries again and locates another level of irritation in his delivery. “I can make you even more mad,” he says. They do the scene, again, and again, and again, grasping for an elusive version of themselves as actors and performers that exists somewhere in the work, and in their persistence.

Rodriguez smiles. He nods as Pasos shirks any semblance of restraint in his delivery. “There’s no limit to how insane you can be,” Rodriguez says. They return to the top, and they run it once more.

 

Explorations in Ceramics and Sculpture — Anne Gregory-Bepler’s Classroom

Anne Gregory-Bepler’s classroom, a sanctuary of Upper School art for more than two decades, is a space that was meant to look less like a museum where art is displayed and more like a room where art is made. Student names from years past are inscribed in wobbly Sharpie on the highest reaches of the walls. Seats of stools are painted with intricate designs. Tabletops are splashed with Pollack-esque streaks of paint, and 3D pieces of thread and wire hang from the ceiling. “I never tell my students they have to do this,” Gregory-Bepler says of her Explorations in Ceramics and Sculpture course. “I say, ‘We could do this.’”

The course, not surprisingly, puts the “explore” in explorations. Her nine students have been working with ceramics since the fall. Gregory-Bepler welcomes a visiting potter each year to model techniques for students and provide one-on-one guidance — this year, it was Erika Martinez, DA’s assistant director of human resources who has previously served as a sewing teacher and founded a small business dedicated to handcrafted fabric accessories. But students largely choose their own direction once they’ve acquired rudimentary skills.

Today’s class finds Gregory-Bepler’s students in various self-directed stages. Some are glazing their koi fish, which students built by hand with clay and sculpted with tools to create the texture of fish scales. They crafted the fish upon the request of Bonnie Wang, an Upper School Mandarin Chinese teacher, to coincide with the Upper School’s celebration of Lunar New Year. Others are working with wet clay on a wheel or sanding completed and soon-to-be-glazed sculptures. One student adds splashes of green paint to their cookie bowl. Another carefully examines a clay cat, while a third looks up illustrations of Snoopy as inspiration for a new project.

The wondering, and wandering, is central to Gregory-Bepler’s philosophy as an art teacher. While her students shape, chisel and coat their projects, she is reminded of a quote she recently read from research scientist Richard Ferguson, one that would buoy even the most skeptical of ceramic explorers. “I would rather have questions,” Ferguson says, “that can’t be answered.”

Learn more about the arts at DA Upper School at www.da.org/academics/upper-school/arts, and about Durham Academy’s arts offerings across divisions at www.da.org/arts.