Every parent knows that one of the greatest struggles of parenting is knowing whether the choices you and your child make are the ones that will lead to success in the future. Let’s be clear that by success, I mean the ability to adapt to changing roles, expectations, and markets or having the skills necessary to manage uncertainty with grace and aplomb. And changing landscapes are certainly ahead.
In the next 12 years, around 30% of American jobs will be fully automated, according to a study done by the McKinsey Global Institute. That’s nearly one third of the entire labor market! With the exponential growth of technology and our ever increasing obsession with productivity, by 2030, most of the predictable, formulaic, and low-creativity jobs will be OFF THE TABLE. In case you need another figure to drive this home, that’s 70 MILLION U.S. JOBS.
So how are we supposed to prepare our children to stand out as leaders in the workforce and not be easily replaced by advancing automation? By ensuring that they have A GOOD ARTS EDUCATION.
Why arts, you ask? Because the arts produce adaptable, creative, resilient, and determined individuals. Through the creative process, people are able to discover new ways of thinking about things, new ways to connect with others, and new ways to engage with the world. The arts teach people how to utilize existing processes and adapt them to serve unique purposes. They teach that discipline and perseverance is a requirement of success and that there are no substitutes for practice and patience. But most importantly, the arts teach people to keep their minds open to explore possibility wherever and whenever possible.
We, here at Ballet Arizona, recognize and understand just how important the arts are in preparing children to be successful in the world and this very belief serves as the foundation for our Class Act community engagement program. Each year, we partner with schools around the Valley to give their students an opportunity to fully engage in the creative process using dance and movement as the primary tools of discovery. Participating students are not only able to interact with and learn from some of our professional dancers but more importantly, their own peers. The students are guided through the process of choreographing a dance together and are responsible for collaborating, evaluating, and deciding upon the best courses of action to complete the objective. After concluding the process, these students then perform their work in front of up to 4,000 community members at one of our Ballet Under the Stars park performances. Our goal is for them to experience the creative process from beginning to end and learn how to generate, evaluate, and connect ideas in a productive and creative way.
And this is exactly why the Class Act Program at Ballet Arizona is so crucial. Creators, Innovators, Designers, Thinkers, Hypothesizers, Problem-Solvers. These are the people that will run the world someday. It’s our job to make sure that they have the wherewithal to do it.
If you’re interested in learning more about the benefits of dance study and how dance students can apply their skills and knowledge in the “real world”, please check out the links below!
- Don’t Get it Twisted: Dance Is An Intellectual Pursuit by Alice Blumenfeld, Dance Magazine
- Top 10 Skills Children Learn From the Arts by Valerie Strauss, The Washington Post
- Life Lessons From A Ballet Dancer by Shaun Rein, Forbes
To see choreography of this year’s Class Act Students, come to one of our Ballet Under the Stars free park performances!
Join us at 7:00pm on any of the dates listed below:
- Wednesday, September 12th – Tempe Sports Complex in Tempe, Arizona – NEW LOCATION!
- Thursday, September 13th – Fountain Park in Fountain Hills, Arizona
- Friday, September 14th – Estrella Lakeside Amphitheater in Goodyear, Arizona
- Saturday, September 15th – Steel Indian School Park in Phoenix, Arizona
