LEEDS — When teachers and older kids informed 8-year-old Zachary Roberge he would be part of a choreographed dance performance two weeks ago, the third-grader was skeptical.
“I was kind of, like, scared, like, ‘oh geez,’” he said Wednesday. “I was just like, I haven’t seen these people before and I didn’t know what to do.”
On Wednesday, Roberge and his fellow third-graders twirled and moved in ways they didn’t know they could. They did so in front of their parents and the rest of the student body at Leeds Elementary School, minus the fourth- and fifth-graders, who will perform Thursday.
Zach was a skeptic no longer.
“I just think it’s fun making up random moves,” he said.
The performance was made possible when 36 middle and high school students from the Dance Education Laboratory at Pioneer Valley Performance Arts Charter School in South Hadley set up residence at the school for eight days.
The students broke up into groups of six to eight and headed into different third-, fourth- and fifth-grade classrooms to help craft different dance performances — even for students who had never before danced.
This is the sixth year for the program at Leeds. It’s made possible by an annual grant from Jody Arnhold, who founded Dance Education Laboratory. Other schools in Northampton, Amherst, Chicopee, South Hadley, and Holyoke have also taken part.
“Our motto is dance for every child,” dance teacher Ann Biddle, co-founder of the program, said. “Our model is inclusive, it’s collaborative, it values diverse perspectives, and it engages different kinds of students in this dance-making process.”
While the younger students get to design their performance, older students guide them through the process.
“They’re learning about leadership and how you really work in a collaborative group,” Biddle said of the older students.
The third-grade performance Wednesday was based on an old Wampanoag folk tale the students had been studying. Dance teachers Biddle, Shakia Johnson and Remy Fernandez-O’Brien broke the students up into three groups: the porpoises, the fishing people and the sharks.
Renee Bachman, a third-grade teacher, said the class used its social studies time slot to prepare for the show.
“It’s a different mode of expression,” she said. “Some of the most resistant end up being some of the best dancers.”
Stella Ditkovski, 8, didn’t need any convincing.
“I just love dancing,” she said. “You get to feel the music and the choreography. … It’s like telling a story — a really good way of telling a story.”
Summer Ventura, 8½, said, “Another thing is that you can show your feelings without having to explain them and you can move your body however you want.”
A major component of the program, Biddle said, is the mentorship role the middle school and high school students have.
“I love it,” 14-year-old Jake Rosenblum said. “You learn so much while they’re learning. I can confidently say we each get an equal amount of learning and experience.”
Tali Sureck, 15, said some kids — especially the fifth-graders — can be resistant to dancing.
“Some of them come in and say they don’t dance and leave and say they’re dancers,” she said. “One kid in my fourth-grade group refused to do anything the first day. By the end, he was totally into it.”
“It’s good to see kids expand their horizons,” Rosenblum said.
Jack Suntrup can be reached at jsuntrup@gazettenet.com.