This article was provided by Adam Breen, San Benito High School Communications Director.
The start of the second semester has signaled the official opening of the bond measure-funded Visual and Performing Arts and Academic (VAPAA) building on the campus of San Benito High School. The building also houses some social science classes.
Heather Nichols, division chair of the VAPA Department and a dance educator and advisor, said her department is appreciative of the new building that houses “professional-standard classrooms in dance, visual arts and ceramics.”
The new dance studio, for example, features a marley floor that provides stable ground for advanced dance movements. Additionally, three walls of the room have ballet barres “so students can work on their technique to become skilled dancers.” The room’s sound system “carries throughout the room and a high ceiling allows for dancers to move in a larger space, not concerned about ceilings with jumps and leaps,” Nichols said.
The new visual arts studios offer students the option of professional drawing tables and collaborative group work tables. The drawing tables have storage drawers so each student can keep track of their work. The new ceramics studio offers options to work on greenware at the tables or throwing advance pottery at the wheels. The studios have four kilns to accommodate the projects that the students produce and there is an outdoor area for pugging clay and maintaining student work throughout the entire creative process.
The art studio is now a well-lit environment that teacher John Robrock says is “extremely beneficial for students.”
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