Fifth-Grade Students to Get Dance Lessons in New Class

By Katherine Cromer Brock, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas

Jun. 18–In the fall, students at Bellaire, Midway Park and Shady Brook elementary schools will be fox-trotting their way to an appreciation of dance and music.

“Dancing Classrooms,” a 10-week program for all fifth-graders at the schools, will begin in October. It will be part of the curriculum for physical education and music, Superintendent Gene Buinger said.

“We hope that we’ll be able to do it at all of the schools, and it will become a regular part of our fifth-grade curriculum,” he said.

Dancing Classrooms was started in 1994 as the educational division of the American Ballroom Theater Company Inc. Its founder and director is award-winning ballroom dancer Pierre Dulaine, who will come in September to train instructors for H-E-B as well as three schools in the Fort Worth district, which are also starting the program.

Costs of the program will largely be covered by the Amon Carter Foundation and the Crystelle Waggoner Charitable Trust. The district’s cost will be $5,000 per school.

Students will learn dances including the waltz, rumba, tango and foxtrot, as well as the history and geography associated with each dance.

“It’s going to be fun for the kids,” Buinger said. “This is the opportunity to acquire a lifetime skill.”

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Katherine Cromer Brock covers the Hurst-Euless-Bedford school district.

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Copyright (c) 2006, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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