Performing Arts

Once a cycle, each Lower School class comes together in the Black Box Theater to dance, act out folk tales, write songs, and especially sing together. Students playfully fill the space with voice, movement, experimentation, and artistry. With portions of the repertoire performed in Spanish, and the support of teachers and musical accompaniment, SING builds more than confidence; it builds community.

The Lower School brings abundant joy to the stage in the form of yearly concerts, performances, and weekly assemblies. The December Winter Concert is a primer for the choral program and lets students display their passions and talents early on. Students use their best vocal techniques as they proudly and confidently sing standing on risers while lifting their voices.

Nightingale’s four-year music composition track is one-of-a-kind. Students write their own scores, adapt fairytales into operas, and turn favorite books into musicals. Students are given the freedom to explore musical interests with string instruments and guitar in ways that reinforce technique and improve musical literacy. From open mics to choreographed performances, students have a plethora of opportunities to perform and share their inspired original works with the school community.

A dance track was created at Nightingale to give every student the experience of having movement in their day. Dance is required in Classes K-VI but becomes a more personal choice in Classes VII and VIII. Here, students specialize and start to explore dance in more depth. A dance track in Middle School allows dedicated dancers to do more of what they love and readies them for higher levels of instruction.

Repeating lines and choreography over and over requires technique and concentration, and is rarely glamorous; yet, these are the moments Nightingale students will remember about their study of theater arts. Collaboration is fundamental here. Regardless of phenomenal fall plays or full-scale spring musicals, what matters to the students is not the final production, but what it takes to get there.

Nightingale is very much a singing school, and not just in the halls and classrooms or on the rooftop. Ensembles abound. Singers can participate in Upper School Chorus, Chamber Chorus, Gospel Choir, and a student-run award-winning a cappella group. Finding a balance between creative and joyful, intellectual and rigorous, Nightingale’s singers become fluent in music and flourish from that knowledge as much as their voices do.