Words in Motion: Chester Academy students bring poetry to life through dance

What happens when a public speaking class and a dance class decide to work together? At Chester Academy, students are finding out firsthand.

Chester Academy teachers Jen Daly and Christopher De Lao have teamed up on a cross-disciplinary project that pairs student poetry and interpretive dance. The idea is straightforward: students in De Lao’s public speaking class write or select poems that mean something to them, and students in Daly’s dance class choreograph and perform movement to bring those poems to life.

An unexpected partnership

The two classes couldn’t be more different on the surface, but that’s part of what makes the collaboration work. Daly’s dance class runs as a PE elective, and it’s built around the idea that movement doesn’t have to look like a sport to count.

“By design, what I try to do is create a safe place for them where they understand that their bodies and the way that they move, that is fantastic, and it doesn’t need to fall into a specific sport in order to be valued,” she said.

De Lao’s public speaking class covers the basics of effective communication — voice projection, body language, physical presence, and how to connect with an audience. Earlier in the year, his students performed poems at Chester Academy’s multicultural assembly, choosing works tied to their own cultural backgrounds and identities. That experience laid some groundwork for what came next.

Before the two classes joined forces, Daly’s students did a practice run with Dayanara Garcia, Chester’s director of curriculum, instruction and communication. The dance students gave Garcia a list of movement words — jump, run, bend, etc... — and she used them to write a poem about social justice, drawing on the idea that social change is itself called a movement.

The dance students then choreographed responses to the poem’s words, not to music. That was new territory for most of them, and that was the whole point.

“This practice is really about getting them to think a little bit more broadly; that movement can be created and inspired by words,” Daly said.

Garcia shared how excited she was to be a part of the initial collaboration.

“It was so powerful to see the choreography aligned with poetic verse. I was mesmerized by our students’ creativity and talent. It’s amazing to see how poetry can be integrated across multiple content areas.”

Once the cross-class collaboration began in earnest, the public speaking students either wrote original poems or chose existing ones, covering topics such as immigration, family, cultural identity, and coming of age. Dance students then selected poems to interpret without knowing who the authors were. They were encouraged to picking pieces that resonated with them personally.

Student collaboration

When the two groups finally met, the pairing process immediately had a positive workshopping atmosphere, where mutual appreciation and collaboration took off.

“It was so nice to see the two sides listen to each other well and then just start getting in the creative flow right away,” De Lao said. “Watching them do that organically; that was awesome.”

In some cases, dancers have incorporated the speakers directly into the performance, making them part of the movement rather than just the source material.

Both teachers are quick to point out that none of this is just about putting on a show. Daly, who worked as a professional dance artist before coming to Chester, has long collaborated with musicians, visual artists, and designers. She sees that kind of cross-discipline work as essential — and increasingly so. “Especially in this AI world, activities like this become extra important because you can’t get fed the information,” she said. “You have to be creative, critical-thinking, collaborative people. Those are required skills for this project, and they’re the kind of skills that will benefit these students long after Chester Academy, in so many aspects of life.”

De Lao echoes that. His class is built on the idea that there’s no real failure — only practice.

“There’s really no messing up in this particular class as long as you go out and practice or try your skills, because every experience, every project, every speech is a learning opportunity,” he said.

“I look at them every day in class,” De Lao said of his students. “I see leaders of tomorrow. They’re smart, they’re thoughtful, they’re respectful, they’re interested in learning about each other — and that’s more of what we need.”

The project is wrapping up in the final weeks of April with a closed showing — just the two classes performing for each other, with a small invited audience. The decision to keep it intimate is intentional; both teachers want students to feel safe taking creative risks without the pressure of a large audience.

But it may not stay small for long.

“Depending on how this first round goes, Jen and I have talked about wanting to do this project again in the future,” De Lao said. “Maybe we can open it up to a bit of a larger audience.”