Bravo!

Disney Workshops teach the art of great entertainment

by Geoff Giordano

For a real-world performance education with world-class Disney flair, music students and their teachers can turn to Disney's unique Workshops. These hands-on instrumental, voice, dance, and theater sessions let budding performers learn essential techniques from some of the most accomplished entertainment professionals.

The workshops, offered since 1989 at Disneyland in California, and later in 1994 in Walt Disney World in Florida, have evolved from a handful of offerings into a broad range of highly customizable lessons offered 365 days a year. Both parks tailor their workshops differently.

"We began [the workshops] in California, and once we got them established and successful, we shared our technology and approach with Walt Disney World," recalls Greg Glover, now a Disney human resources business partner. Glover wrote the curriculum for the first of five Disneyland workshops. Walt Disney World has unique programs called Disney Performing Arts Workshops that are available for vocal, instrumental and dance groups.

Disney conceived the workshops when educators approached them seeking more than just performance opportunities for their students, says Greg Williams, an entertainment manager at Disneyland who also helped launch the program. "The biggest challenge was to develop a curriculum that was accessible to a lot of different groups," Williams recalls. "We had to develop material that any group—junior high, high school, college—could perform."

Disneyland Workshops

All workshop clinicians have a Disney background. They tailor each session to the proficiency of the attendees, and often consult with students' music directors to determine what skills to work on. To encourage repeat participation, each workshop provides a deep body of material to tackle. That variety means participants can return to Disneyland and take the same workshop, even perform the same piece, but have a different teacher focus on a different approach in that day's session.

A prime example of the value the workshops offer can be found at Disneyland's "Soundtrack Session: Instrumental." Shawn Kelly, Disney Performing Arts manager at Disneyland, says, "Because of where we are here in Southern California, we've been able to take advantage of folks who are working in the industry, and we've based our workshops around that. In a soundtrack session, you're going into studio and recording a piece of music. We have the actual piece of music from a film clip that the kids synch up to. We found instrumental sections of our animated and live-action features, a great instrumental moment that's maybe 30 seconds long, maybe 90 seconds long. The kids get wireless headsets with a click track and everything is recorded digitally."

The pace of the workshop ensures that the students get an unflinching look at how they'll be expected to perform as professionals. "One of the main teaching points is that when you're in the real world you don't have three months to plan and practice your show—you've maybe got three minutes," Kelly continues. "So when [the kids] sit down, we pull out a simple piece of music. We say, 'Okay, play through it, look through it, make sure you're good, and we're going to record this in 60 seconds.' The kids say, 'Wow!' and they all freak out And then they realize we're serious.

"They do it the first time and it's not perfect, and we know it and talk to them about the importance of reading. From the very first moment where we shock them to 90 minutes later, they've started playing pieces that they would never before have been able to look at and be playing in five or eight minutes."

The depth of material used in each workshop is vital to ensuring that teachers have the utmost flexibility in shaping their lessons. For example, material has been developed for concert bands that might use nontraditional instruments like violin or guitar. Books of music have been arranged in keys that are best for string orchestra or for bands. In the soundtrack workshop, more than 20 pieces are available for performance; a group might work through four or six on average.

Above all, the workshops expose participants to the nuances of entertainment careers that it might otherwise take them years to experience. For example, clinician Sal Lozano—sax player for Dancing with the Stars and American Idol — "comes into a workshop and says, 'Last night on Dancing with the Stars [this] happened,' " Kelly enthuses.

The workshops are a critical recruitment tool for Disney, Kelly says; the majority of the workshops' staff are alums. And starting this year, Disneyland is offering a series of special workshops for theater students, focusing on improvisational technique and scene study.

To learn the full range of workshops offered, visit www.disneyperformingarts.com and follow the Disney Performing Arts Workshops link. Applications are available online and auditions are not required for most sessions.