I think they’ve learned so much in just these four days, and given the opportunity to explore a different culture through different media: dance, the arts, the languages — things like that.”

Meg Brennan, third-grade teacher at Melville Elementary School

PORTSMOUTH — About 75 third-grade students at Melville Elementary School recently took a trip around the globe without ever leaving their auditorium.

Under the guidance of Newport Contemporary Ballet (NCB), which worked with them for four days, students performed dances from Ecuador, Greece, and Japan while also learning about those countries’ geography, culture, arts, language and more. A similar program was held at Hathaway School, where students studied Argentina, Italy, Kenya and Spain.

“We reached out to the Newport Contemporary Ballet, and they do a third-grade curriculum,” said Meg Brennan, a third-grade teacher at Melville. “They came in and taught the kids about multicultural dances. It focuses on the arts, music, dance, and we also talk about the language piece of it, which is great. We learn about the geography — where it is — all that kind of stuff, and fun facts about the country. It’s been a great opportunity for the kids to learn about outside our Portsmouth bubble, about the world around us. I think they’ve learned so much in just these four days, and given the opportunity to explore a different culture through different media: dance, the arts, the languages — things like that.”

The program also gave students an opportunity to learn coordination, teamwork and spacial awareness — “coordinating the dances by making sure we’re aware of our surroundings and essentially the social skills that we’re building,” she said.

Danielle Genest, NCB’s artistic director, said the dance company’s “Dancing Through Boundaries” program brings movement education classes into schools like Melville throughout Rhode Island and Southern Massachusetts.

“We believe dance should be accessible to everyone, and it helps us all learn new ways to express ourselves and better connect to one another, and that makes us happy and healthy and gives us new possibilities in our lives,” she told students before the culminating performance which the entire study body got to see.

NCB dancers Brooke DiFrancesco, Deanna Gerde, and Timur Kan worked for four days with several different groups of third-graders.

“We’ve used a country for each group and we gave that group a piece of artwork that comes from someone from that country,” said DiFrancesco, who’s been with NCB since 2009. “We looked at it, discussed what we liked about it, what we didn’t care for so much. We talked about the different things we saw within it. We talked about the fact that art is subjective and my opinion and someone else’s opinion may be very different but it’s not right or wrong.”

Before each dance, student dancers shared “fun facts” about each country:

• Japan is made up of more than 6,000 islands, which makes it an archipelago. It also has the highest life expectancy for both men and women, at 84 years. Tejime is a rhythm and clapping ritual performed after a big event, such as a wedding. 

• Greece’s capital of Athens has the highest number of theaters of any city in the world, and the country is considered the birthplace of not only acting and theater, but the original Olympic Games as well.

• Spanish is the most common language spoken in Ecuador, which is right on the equator. Students studied a painting of the Ecuador volcano, Cotopaxi, which last erupted in 2022.

After the group’s performances, all students were invited to “dance” with their arms while acting out the following lines along to music:

“There are so many different cultures in our big beautiful world, but we all come together to learn and grow. We use our eyes to watch and look and see. We use our ears to listen and try to truly hear. We use our mouths to speak and share who we are. We use our hearts to care for others, both near and far.”