Casa Romantica Summer Classes Nurture Passion for the Arts

By Breeana Greenberg

Casa Romantica Cultural Center and Gardens in San Clemente offers a variety of arts education camps and programs for children of all ages, from their paint and play series introducing visual arts to young children to their college dance program for teens considering a major in dance.

Paint and Play Series

Families can enjoy painting and drawing activities on the grounds of the Casa Romantica through the Paint and Play Series. The series is recommended for kids ages 2-5.

Casa Romantica Executive Director Amy Behrens says that early exposure to arts education in childhood development “integrates the left side of the mind, the right side of the mind, They’re utilizing a lot of creative cognition skills, they’re learning how to share and move from parallel play to interactive play with other students.”

“So it’s all around a fantastic class for young children to participate in; it’s a core part of our arts education program for young students,” Behrens continued.

Casa Kids Creative Camp

Casa Romantica’s new format of their Summer Camp offers an introduction to dancing, singing and painting. Kids ages 5-8 will work with professionals in Orange County from a wide variety of creative mediums. The program will run for four weeks, with three hours of instruction each Monday.

“We’ve had so many families who wanted to participate in some of our other arts education programs but were hesitant to sign up because they weren’t sure if their children were ready to commit to something,” Behrens said. “Casa Romantica offers this as a service to these families, because it’s such a low barrier to entry.”

In the creative camp, kids can learn about different genres of dance, vocal arts, painting, drawing and sculpting and more.

“From there, we hope that it’ll inspire those children to participate in activities of their school or after school, during the normal school year,” Behrens said.

Casa Romantica Music Student Ensemble

Free masterclasses will be held in August for serious musicians ages 13-17, with auditions and weekly classical music ensemble practices from September through June.

Casa Romantica Music Student Ensemble developed from Casa’s Summer Music Academy, which has run for the past seven years. This year, Casa is taking a break from the Summer Music Academy to launch new programs, including the Music Student Ensemble.

“The classical music ensemble is really one of its kind opportunity for talented young students performing classical music to have access to really fantastic training weekly as an ensemble,” Behrens said.

In the first year of this program, Casa aims to put together a small classical music ensemble from students selected from the auditions. Students in the ensemble will have performance opportunities throughout the year.

College Dance Program

Casa Romantica’s three-day dance program consists of masterclasses for serious high school dancers considering a major in dance in college. The program builds a connection between college dance departments and high school student dancers, partnering with Cal State Long Beach, Chapman University and University of California, Irvine.

“We’ll be providing masterclasses with instructors from each of those universities and colleges, and a variety of genres for teen students and providing them with lecture and instruction opportunities and choreography and movement so that they can put together a portfolio piece to present prospective colleges and universities,” Behrens said.