“This Is Our Quiet Time” BFS ordinarily shares brief clips in its Video Archives, but we make an exception this week with the full version of the original BFS musical, Forward to the Past. Written and performed by the BFS community in 1989, Forward to the Past: the Historical Hysterical Follies of Brooklyn Friends School, relates our school’s […]
Brooklyn Friends School began its 148th school year this month with its traditional convocation. Our opening assembly for older students, held at the Brooklyn Meeting House on Schermerhorn Street, came to be known as convocation in the early 1990s, yet this year’s largest-ever student body required separate convocations for the middle and upper school divisions. […]
A Truly Phenomenal Woman BFS Dance Concert 1989 With Maya Angelou’s passing last week, let’s go back 25 years to 1989, the year which saw the creation and first performance of “A Truly Phenomenal Woman” at the BFS Dance Concert. This short dance was set to Maya Angelou’s poem “Phenomenal Woman.” Choreographed by Monique N. […]
“Know your history, ask questions and follow your heart.” Garrett Bradley, BFS ’03, Bridge Film Festival alumna It’s Spring Break, but it’s also time to reserve your tickets for the 15th annual Bridge Film Festival on Thursday, April 10 at BFS. The festival was established in 1999 at BFS by Andy Cohen, BFS director of media services, and […]
Thoughts this week turn to the many wonderful people we know and have known at BFS, particularly those no longer with us. Such thoughts make me feel fortunate to have worked with the late Gilbert Zalman. I so enjoyed my occasional conversations with Gil over the years that I envied his students their near-daily opportunity […]
Dance Concert Rehearsal, probably 1998 Digitizing much of the BFS dance department’s video collection for the BFS Archives video collection yielded unidentified rehearsal videos and one music concert video. Most of these videos seem to have been created after 2000. One dance concert rehearsal video seems to be from 1992 or 1998: that video was […]
1925, BFS Boys Basketball Team, with the Friends School League Championship Trophy It’s a great basketball season for BFS teams, so today let’s look back 89 years ago to February of 1925, when BFS won the Friends Schools national title in boys basketball by defeating Wilmington Friends. The BFS Digital Archives has this photo of our 1925 boys basketball […]
After learning about the Education from the Inside Out Coalition‘s advocacy efforts through their Social Justice Service Learning course, Upper School students Patonya P., Jade H., Grace M., Sierra V., and Abby M. chose to participate in Higher Education for All Month, sharing why higher education is important to them. As part of this […]
1988 Once Upon A Mattress – Shy From the 1988 BFS musical production of Once Upon A Mattress comes the song “Shy” in which Princess Winnifred the Woebegone expresses her true nature as she tries to find Prince Dauntless the Drab for the very first time. And this after she swam the moat to get […]
It’s a throwback this fine Thursday to the “Mood Indigo” scene from the 1989 BFS original musical A Small Cabaret. A Small Cabaret was a departure from the traditional BFS musical: this ensemble production featured standards like Duke Ellington’s “Mood Indigo” and “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing),” yet it also […]
1987 Dames At Sea Take two minutes to enjoy a charming duet in the BFS Middle School’s 1987 production of Dames at Sea, capturing the moment when our romantic leads Dick and Ruby first meet, she swoons into his arms and they both know it’s true love. You might also get a kick out of […]
1987’s The Robber Bridegroom, Upper School Musical Scanning a 1920s scrapbook by hand can be monotonous, so I’ve been multi-tasking by going to my family’s collection of BFS videos once again since I know video did not always survive in the school’s collections over the years. My own home was the source of last week’s Forward […]
