Performing and Visual Arts
Maharishi School offers a wide range of activities to teach, inspire, and provide students with useful life-tools. Among the most important of these are the Performing and Visual Arts. Always, we are encouraging students to...
Know Yourself
Think Deeply
Unleash Your Creativity
Succeed
Performing Arts
The performing arts shine in Maharishi School’s project period. Project choices rotate from play productions, video creations, musical theater, music and recording arts, and the Iowa High School Speech Association competitions (IHSSA).
The IHSSA Large Group Competition and Individual Competition are state-wide dramatic competitions involving schools from all over Iowa. It is a three-level competition beginning with District competitions and then State competition. Teams or individuals are selected from the State level performances to either perform or be recognized at the All-State competition. If a school is selected to perform then that team has the chance to compete for the Critics’ Choice award.
Maharishi School has been competing in the IHSSA Large Group Competition since 1988 and has received Critic’s Choice awards 18 times in the areas of Musical Theater (1), One Act Play(1), Choral Reading(6), Group Mime(6), Solo Mime(2), Reader’s Theater(1) and Radio Broadcasting(1). We have also had teams perform at All-State in the categories of Ensemble Acting and TV News and received the sweepstakes trophy for the most entries honored at All-State in 1998 and again in 2003.
All 9th-grade students take a performing arts class and then have the option of continuing to compete in the IHSSA Large Group or Individual competition. All Upper School students may participate in IHSSA competitions by selecting it as their project period in the 2nd and 3rd quarter of each year.
Visual Arts
In the study of art at Maharishi School, students gain a working understanding of the principles of art and design and become familiar with analyzing and understanding artworks. Students are encouraged to develop personal reactions and ideas. This helps to nourish the students’ awareness through self-referral and reflection; they become more visually aware, flexible, and open to the arts.
“The purpose of art is to elevate the viewer, to raise his level of consciousness. The artist while creating, dives deep within, contacts the field of pure Creative Intelligence, and rises to express creativity. The viewer experiences the artist’s work of art from the outside and through the work of art, dives deep within himself. The work of art does not sit permanently or statically. The consciousness that the art reflects and contains bounces into the viewer and enlivens his being. Successful art keeps enlivening infinity in the people who enjoy it, and continues to resonate infinity in itself generation after generation.” — Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
Maharishi School students are encouraged to follow their passions and utilize the 70-minute project period for developing their talents. Students have pursued watercolor, acrylic, and oil painting, Japanese woodworking, textile art, photography, ceramics, and architectural design.
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