Arts Integration · Additional Resources

In Partnership with Iowa PBS

Arts-Integrated Learning · Online

Two ballet-based lessons developed in collaboration with Iowa PBS — freely available on PBS LearningMedia for classrooms across the state.

About the Partnership

Ballet Des Moines has partnered with Iowa PBS to bring two of our story ballets into K–12 classrooms across the state — and beyond — as fully produced multimedia lessons.

Each lesson lives on PBS LearningMedia, the free educational platform used by teachers nationwide. Lessons include video clips from BDM productions, discussion guides, hands-on activities, and standards alignments — all designed in collaboration between our education team and Iowa PBS producers.

Use them as standalone arts integration units, or as companion materials before or after a BDM performance.

Ballet Des Moines presents Peter and the Wolf — choreography by Lori Grooters & Serkan Usta, in collaboration with Civic Music Association

Music · Dance · Storytelling

Prokofiev's symphonic fairy tale, told through dance.

Sergei Prokofiev composed Peter and the Wolf in 1936 as a children's introduction to the instruments of the orchestra. Each character — Peter, the bird, the duck, the cat, the wolf, the grandfather, and the hunters — is voiced by a different instrument.

Ballet Des Moines produced a staged version with the Civic Music Association, choreographed by Lori Grooters & Serkan Usta, that adds a third layer: movement. The Iowa PBS companion lesson invites students to identify each instrument by ear, recognize how each character's choreography reflects their music, and create their own movement vocabulary for a character of their invention.

Grade

K–3

Format

Video + Activities

Subjects

Music · Dance · ELA

Host

PBS LearningMedia

Visit Iowa PBS

Of Gravity and Light — a Ballet Des Moines original work

Science · Dance · Inquiry

An original BDM work exploring the physics of motion through choreography.

Of Gravity and Light is a Ballet Des Moines original work — composed by Beau Kenyon, choreographed by Tom Mattingly, with dramaturgy by Ilya Vidrin and video installation by Yu-Wen Wu — that makes the physics of motion visible. Dancers embody concepts of force, balance, momentum, and resistance — turning the laws of motion into something the audience can feel as much as understand.

The Iowa PBS companion lesson invites students to investigate Newton's laws through movement: predicting how a body in motion will respond, observing real dancers in action, and reflecting on how art can model science — and how science can inspire art.

Grade

3–5

Format

Video + Activities

Subjects

Science · Dance · STEM

Host

PBS LearningMedia

Visit Iowa PBS

More Ways In

Step into the studio.

Ballet Des Moines continues to develop arts-integrated curriculum for classrooms and libraries while offering field trip opportunities for youth to learn science, language arts, technology, math, and social studies in the ballet studio.

Contact Michael Tomlinson at michael@balletdesmoines.org to book your visit.