Class is in session for more than 2,000 Santa Barbara County elementary school students. But it’s an unusual class in an even more unusual setting: The Santa Barbara Bowl.
"This year, it's Step Afrika!, a project for African-American step dance," said Eric Shiflett, Program Director for the Santa Barbara Bowl Foundation. "They already have a study guide in the classrooms to understand what they are seeing."
Fourth- through sixth-grade students from around Santa Barbara County were bused in for Kids at the Bowl.
Step Afrika! is a group of performers teaching kids about the history of 'stepping.' It blends percussive dance styles practiced by African-American fraternities and sororities in a show that also highlights songs, storytelling, and audience participation.
The kids are mesmerized.
"It's really cool. It's like a once-in-a-lifetime experience to be here," said Marcus Trefflich, who is a sixth-grade student from Patterson Elementary School in Orcutt.
The Bowl teams up with the nonprofit Children’s Creative Project for the Kids At The Bowl Event.
Kai Tepper Jahnkee is Executive Director of the project, which is focused on connecting kids with the arts.
"Children's Creative Project is one of three nonprofit programs under the Santa Barbara County Education Office," he said. "To be able to team up with someone like the Santa Barbara Bowl gives an opportunity for students who have maybe never seen a live performance at a venue like this to see firsthand the joy and power live performance can have."
The event is one of the things the Santa Barbara Bowl Foundation has done for the community for years.
"We put together an event with an artist where we can take their curriculum, put it into the schools and have the kids study it, and then we bus in school children from throughout the county to attend the show," said Santa Barbara Bowl Foundation CEO Rick Boller.
Teacher Dustin Winkelpleck, with Orcutt’s Patterson Elementary School, said many of his sixth-grade students would never have an experience like this without the program.
"It's just a wonderful event for these kids. On the ride down here, some of them told me that they've never even been past Santa Maria. It might be a once-in-a-lifetime situation for them."
