The Blue and Gray: 30 Years of BFS's Eeriest Tradition

In the distance...

It can only be the Lower School Halloween Dance! In 1984, Marna Herrity was our dance teacher and she conceived of the Halloween Dance for the entirety of the Lower School's oldest grade. It immediately became a BFS tradition, a rite of passage of Lower School learning. The Halloween Dance has been directed by Margaret Bary for the last ten years. Margaret reports that this year will be our largest Halloween Dance, with a record number of 55 4th grade student performers.

Many aspects of the Halloween Dance are unchanged, most importantly that students still choreograph the work each year, guided by their director. It is an important early opportunity for BFS students to learn general aspects of theater such as listening and waiting for their cues, entrances and exits. Our students continue to design their own fabulous skeletal costumes using fluorescent tape on black clothing. The music, of course, remains selections from the "scary" album first excerpted in 1984, though those selections vary with the years.

the sound of bones...

There have been few changes. The performance space has gone from the Lower Gym to the Meeting House Theater and then back to the Lower Gym, where it remains today so that all performers may appear on stage simultaneously. When the Halloween Dance was directed by Dori Dietz, our LS dance teacher for many years, 9th grade "buddies" helped 4th graders create their individual papier mâché masks, while today our 4th graders's smiling faces are covered in make-up also of their own design, applied by parent volunteers. The largest change is that the Halloween Dance was first performed by the 5th grade, yet it's been a 4th grade tradition since the Fall of 1986, when the 5th grade joined the Middle School. And one change is also a first: lighting will be used this year in the Gym!

As photos from recent years show, the Halloween Dance is an exciting learning experience treasured by BFS students.