Cheryl Whitney-Marcuard, Dancer/Choreographer
How did you first become involved in Music Together?
In August 1989, I moved to Princeton—newly wed and a little bit adrift, having come to a crucial point in my life as a dancer and ballet teacher. One day I found myself sitting in the quaint office of Mila Gibbons, mentor to my mentor Anna Paskevska. We were talking with quiet enthusiasm about dance and my background, when we heard footsteps crunching on the gravel driveway. “I have someone I want you to meet,” Anna said and introduced me to Ken Guilmartin. Together, they showed me the studio which would soon be the venue of a significant part of my life.
I have always been fascinated with education, teachers, and the arts. It wasn’t until I began dancing, though, that I realized where my real passion lay. The memory of those “Aha” moments when the joy of a whole new world opens up, the shared journey of the teacher and the student—these are what sustain me. When I took the Music Together teacher training in the winter of 1990, I was fascinated by the pure transition of curriculum to classroom. The integrity of the work was evident almost immediately. This appealed to the educator in me. The obvious delight of the students (children and parents) appealed to every other part of me that loves the arts. This program was neither Music Lite nor Superbabies. In our discussion afterwards, I saw that the Music Together program could accommodate not only each child’s learning style, but each teacher’s style as well.
Why have you stayed with the Music Together program?
In the almost twenty years that I have been teaching Music Together, I have learned so much from the children and their parents. I have been told story upon story that has let me know how our approach to music and movement has enriched and changed lives. The expression of pure joy on the face of a child gives me energy. I met the mother of a six-month-old who told me that she was in my class because her child’s first smile was in response to an experience at a Music Together open house. And what a smile it is!
Cheryl Whitney-Marcuard teaches five classes a week at the Music Together Lab School in Princeton. She teaches beginning through advanced ballet at the Princeton Ballet School and teaches ballet in the Department of Theater and Dance at Princeton University. She has been the recipient of two New Jersey State Council on the Arts Artist-in-Residence grants and is a frequent presenter at area Association for the Education of Young Children conventions.