The Raymond F. Kravis Center for the Performing Arts celebrated the sixth season of its Broadway Reach arts education program with virtual student performances and student artwork.
Made possible in collaboration with a grant from the Max M. and Marjorie S. Fisher Foundation Arts & Culture Fund of the Community Foundation for Palm Beach and Martin Counties, the students’ performances and art exhibition for 2021 focused on Broadway’s “Wicked.” The grant allowed the Kravis Center to provide Broadway Reach sequential arts education and exposure to nearly 100 underserved children from neighborhood afterschool programs.
“Broadway Reach was developed for students enrolled in underserved schools to participate in an arts education program led by local teaching artists in connection with a Kravis on Broadway performance at no cost to them,” said Tracy Butler, Director of Education at the Kravis Center. “Since we could not have students attend a performance in person, we brought promotional footage of Wicked to them virtually. In a typical season, we offer more than 600 education and community engagement events year-round serving more than 80,000 students of all ages.”
This year, students from The Conservatory School at North Palm Beach, Lake Worth Middle School and U. B. Kinsey/Palmview Elementary School of the Arts were enrolled in Broadway Reach. They performed musical selections from Wicked where they sang and choreographed dances to ‘Defying Gravity’ and ‘Flying High’ via Zoom as well as created an artistic recipe book of potions based upon the musical. The program focused on visual art, dance and voice through the lens of adversity and popularity, the two main issues present in the “Wicked” musical.
The Kravis Center is a not-for-profit performing arts center located at 701 Okeechobee Blvd. in West Palm Beach, FL. The Center’s mission is to enhance the quality of life in Palm Beach County by presenting a diverse schedule of national and international artists and companies of the highest quality, by offering comprehensive arts education programs – serving nearly 3 million students since its inception; by providing a Palm Beach County home for local and regional arts organizations to showcase their work; and by providing an economic catalyst and community leadership in West Palm Beach, supporting efforts to increase travel and tourism to Palm Beach County.
For more information on the Kravis Center or the Broadway Reach program, please visit the website at www.Kravis.org.