As you walk through the front entrance on 35th St., you might believe you’ve stepped into a run-of-the-mill high school. Paintings hang from the walls, signaling the presence of an art program in this school. It’s nice, but nothing you haven’t seen before. This is, after all, just another public school in the District of Columbia.
Then you notice the dancers.
In the middle of the lobby, about 15 teenagers are leaning against a set of bars, all of them wearing ballet uniforms, practicing moves in unison. On the sidelines, an older man sits in a chair, tapping a pole. He occasionally calls out advice: “Make sure your back is straight! Tuck in that chin!” A piano plays recital music behind the group. The kids can’t be much older than freshmen or sophomores in high school, yet they move confidently, far better than any other high school dancers you’ve seen at that age. Behind the dance class lies a set of doors that lead to a theater. Above their heads, a large sign welcomes you to the Duke Ellington School of the Arts.
From its home in the heart of Georgetown, the Duke Ellington School has beckoned the best and brightest of the District’s young artists, musicians, dancers and actors since 1974. With a large pool of talent, and a location just two blocks from Georgetown University, one would expect the wealth of performances to draw large numbers of college students. Despite the close relationship between Duke Ellington and the University, however, many Georgetown students know little about the school other than the Big Green Chair. One Georgetown student, when asked about the school, replied, “There’s a school there?”
“Off the wall, off the hook and off the wall,” Dr. Michael Clarke, Dean of School Operations at Duke Ellington, said describing life at the school. Clarke, a chemistry doctorate who previously taught at Southeastern University, had almost given up his second passion as a pianist and organist when a friend told him of a public school seeking teachers with musical training.
“This is the only job where I can sing in a science class and it’s valid. It’s the only job where in calculus class I can discuss the difficulties in Chopin, because someone in there is studying that too. It’s the only place where I can relate a discussion of language to Mozart’s Requiem,” he said.
As he walks down the aged hallways of the school, Clarke greets almost every student by name. He’s greeted in kind, and several students run up and hug him. Students are flowing out of classrooms, running back and forth between rooms and lockers. What stands out is that, above the bustle of hallway movement, you can hear students humming or singing outloud at the top of their lungs.
Clarke turns to enter what looks like the entrance to a supply closet. The couches, piles of books, fashion clippings and plant life scattered among the ring of desks give the room the feel of an artist’s studio, rather than the writing classroom it is.
Patricia Elam stands beside the desk as she converses with the steady stream of departing students. As head of the creative writing department, she has taught at Duke Ellington for seven years.
“I used to be a lawyer before I recovered,” she said laughingly. “Toward the end of that career, I went back to school, got a master’s in creative writing, wrote a novel, and ended up here.”
Although students apply for admission for the arts aspect of the school, they still take a full courseload in the traditional academic subjects. Even in these courses, the artistic aspect of the school can be felt—in addition to the District-mandated French and Spanish courses, Duke Ellington offers Italian, a popular choice among the many musicians and would-be vocalists.
“Our art classes are pretty unique to this building. What you’d get in a photography technique class here is not what you’d get in a typical school,” Clark said. “Teachers do things to get students to include their art form in what they do academically. I used to teach chemistry: we’d learn the periodic table by singing songs,” he said.
It’s not just at the high school level that Duke Ellington’s art classes excel; in many respects, it could give a university art education a run for its money. For example, Nikki Sutton, a dance and physical education teacher, emphasizes an uncommon style of dance called Horton, which she said draws its inspiration from patterns of lines.
“Maybe you’d find modern dance at a university but not likely Horton. It’s found more in professional dance companies,” Sutton said.
The blend of fine art and a traditional education draws top-level talent to the faculty. Dean of Arts and Chair of the Dance Department Charles Augins, the ballet teacher who drilled his students in the school lobby, had a long career in Europe as a professional dancer, even appearing in the Pink Panther movies. School principal Rory Pullens worked as a writer in Hollywood for shows such as “A Different World.”
The faculty also includes numerous alumni. Sutton spent several years dancing professionally in New York City before returning to Ellington, her alma mater. Class of 1994 graduate Ronald Lee Newman toured with vocal musician David Halbert and stage-managed local shows at the Kennedy Center and the Kaiser Permanente theater program before becoming the Operations and Logistics Manager at the school. Between the two of them, they could count at least a dozen other alumni who are now faculty members.
The school boasts a talented roster of previous students—including comedian Dave Chapelle, as you are reminded by just about everyone at the school—so it’s no wonder that students shine long before they even graduate. Duke Ellington student Virginia Ryan performed at the opening ceremonies of January’s Miss America Pageant, the student newspaper, The Green Chair, trumpets. The school instrumental ensemble even won a Grammy Signature School Enterprise Award (along with $15,000 towards a new recording studio) this spring, beating out nearly 2,000 entries.
At the end of the day, though, it’s in the halls of the school where you see the true talent. At the end of a long hallway decorated with as many murals as there are art classrooms, Clarke greets a young man working at a large artist’s desk. Dennis, a junior in the visual arts department, was busy shading in a Christmas card he will enter in an art competition for a local law firm.
“First place gets a $500 gift certificate to an art store, and they use your card as the company greeting card. Second place gets a $200 gift certificate, third place gets sketchbooks or something,” he said.
Public school financing has proven a challenge to the District of Columbia Public Schools, and despite its reputation for excellence, Duke Ellington has felt the effects of the money crunch.
“An artistic education is expensive. An artist needs paint, brushes, etc. A dancer needs tight shoes, ballet clothes, etc. All of that costs a lot of money,” Clarke said.
The dance class in the lobby was not for show. Although Duke Ellington has several dance studios, one of the principal facilities has suffered serious water damage due to leaks in the roof, to the point that the floor has warped into wave-like crests that some faculty members jokingly refer to as “the tsunami.” District of Columbia Public Schools recently did an assessment of the leakage problem, which faculty said has been ongoing for years. An estimate of when the floor would be repaired was difficult to come by.
The school building dates back to the Civil War era, Clarke said, when it served as a morgue. Assistant Principal Treva Lindsey said
the school was not due for another renovation until 2012. The last major repair, several years ago, was to fix the leak in the roof, she said.
“Despite these challenges, we still function, we all make it happen,” Clarke said.
Duke Ellington has long relied on the kindness of others to continue to prosper; the Ellington Fund partnership between the school and the Kennedy Center and George Washington University helps make up for the slack in municipal funding.
“We are somewhat of a hybrid school between a public school and a charter school, with the partnership. They give us supplies, access to their attorneys, tutors, use of facilities. Many of our students have performed at the Kennedy Center, and we get more access to their artists, who sometimes give master classes,” she said.
The Smithsonian Institution has provided a Museum Studies program, Clarke said, giving students access to federal museum facilities. An exchange program has also been started with schools in Europe and Asia.
Georgetown University is not a partner under the Ellington Fund, although Lindsey says that belies the significant contribution the university has provided to Duke Ellington.
“At one point, the court system shut down Duke Ellington because of a broken staircase. Georgetown came to our rescue by fixing the stairs,” she said. “They’ve been like a sister school to us. We had an arrangement to use their labs, an exchange of teachers; they provide tutors in many subjects; they provide a discount for our teachers to study there. I’ve always felt they should be included as a partner because they give us so much already.”
Although it may be a mystery to many, a growing number of Georgetown students are rediscovering the neighbor school through several outreach programs.
“Here at Georgetown we say we have stressful lives, but many of these students are living lives as multi-faceted as we are,” Lauren Kellner (COL ‘07) said.
Kellner is a co-director of GirlTalk, a Women’s Center-run program in which Georgetown students meet with a group of female Duke Ellington students on Fridays for lunch to discuss issues in their lives.
“I was surprised by how motivated and into it these girls are. I think it’s amazing how insightfully they think about their own issues,” she said.
Yamiche Alcindor (COL ‘09), the other co-director of the program, found her own high school experiences and the small age difference allowed her to relate more closely to the students than she expected.
“I didn’t have that maturity at age 16. Maybe it’s because they’re artists, or because they’re from D.C. They’re not girls you’re going to teach about life, because they already know about it, but they teach you about life.”
A large percentage of students come from lower and middle-income neighborhoods east of the Anacostia, traveling across the city each day to arrive at 8:30 a.m., Clarke said. Many of them stay until 11 p.m. in the evening, or even later.
Max Carter-Oberstone (COL ‘07), who heads the male counterpart program to Girltalk, the Male Development Association, was surprised by the talent he saw at Duke Ellington performances.
“If they did know the degree of talent over there, I think there’d be more interest on campus in their events,” he said.
Students at Duke Ellington know about Georgetown and how it contributes to the school, but few students there have actually interacted with a Georgetown student, said Thandiwe Hunter, a second year student at Duke Ellington.
“Yeah, students know about Georgetown. They’re constantly telling us about Georgetown students doing tutoring here. I’m in GirlTalk, and students really appreciate the program. Girls go throughout the week with a lot of baggage, it’s nice to get that all off your chest,” she said.
Hunter is typical of the students one can expect to find at Duke Ellington: an aspiring actress, she comes from a family full of artists, so her jump from Banneker Middle School in the Shaw neighborhood to Duke Ellington might seem a logical choice.
“My parents didn’t really want me to come here, though. Students get so caught up here, they didn’t want me to give up academics. They didn’t want me to become just another waitress in New York,” she said.
Although she plans to do theater after graduation, she, like many Duke Ellington students, also seek college and successful non-performance based careers.
“I also want to do entertainment law. There’s a lot of kids in the arts that get ‘pimped,’ there’s no other way to say it, who need looking out after,” she said.
Duke Ellington has been compared to the New York’s fabled La Guardia “Fame school,” but Hunter and her classmates also have to deal with the school’s tenuous financial situation, and the challenges it presents: broken floors, leaky roofs, peeling paint amidst the wall-to-wall murals, even the (perennial, persistent) graffiti that plagues the Big Green Chair. Through their strong effort, and that of Georgetown and the D.C. community, the show at Duke Ellington continues to go on.
