Education Supplement: Class Action Listings

Theater and Performing Arts

Are you trapped in a box, climbing a rope, struggling against a terrible wind? Would you like to be? If so, the Goldston Mime Foundation can help. This Chelsea studio offers mime and physical comedy courses. In these small classes, capped at 12 students, even those who long to vocalize can learn useful skills, such as creating a more powerful stillness, making your movements more musical, and making stronger exits and entrances. goldmime.com

Louis Armstrong declared, "If you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know." Yet we suspect the instructors at the New York Jazz Academy will be pleased to explain it to you. With locations in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and Long Island, as well as an online option, the school offers instruction in instrumentation as diverse as saxophone, viola, vocals, drums, and harp. (Jazz harp? Awesome.) The school accepts beginners and advanced students, kids, teens, and adults. nyjazzacademy.com

Fashion

Aichmophobia, the fear of needles, affects perhaps 10 percent of Americans. Of course, most of them aren't specifically afraid of sewing needles, but if this dread anxiety afflicts you and yet you long to make your own clothes, Sew New York can help. Laura McCracken, a Brooklyn Heights instructor with 25 years of experience, offers private and semi-private instruction in Basic Sewing 101, easing in even the most reticent students to the wonders of the sewing machine, as well as hand sewing and couture techniques. sewny.com

Is fast fashion way too slow for you? Is avant-garde couture not really avant enough? Is next season already passé? Maybe it's time you started designing your own togs. You can learn how at Murray Hill's Ashcan Studio of Art, with a four-session course in fashion design. And to transform those sketches and swatches into actual clothing, you can follow up with another four-session class in garment construction. ashcanstudio.com

Writing

Relatively few fiction writers have inspired pop songs, to say nothing of good pop songs, but Myla Goldberg has achieved this rare feat. And if she can inspire the Decemberists, perhaps she can inspire you, too. Over four Wednesday evenings in November and December, Goldberg, the author of Bee Season et al., will lead a Creative Boot Camp at the Center for Fiction in midtown. Classes will focus on craft and practice, and students will "get a handle on voice, character, pacing, and how to generate ideas." centerforfiction.org

Art and Architecture

Astoria and Little Italy excepted, New York isn't particularly Greco-Roman. Most of us don't even wrestle. Nevertheless, midtown's Institute of Classical Architecture and Art celebrates the classical tradition in our relatively recent metropolis, particularly in its architectural form. Upcoming fall courses and workshops include Architectural Rendering, Drawing the Tuscan Order, and a class devoted to reading the sizeable corpus of Leon Battista Alberti, including On the Art of Building in Ten Books. classicist.org

Just when you thought the creative class had been priced out of DUMBO to make way for artisanal cookies and high-rises, the Creatively WILD Art Studio has set up shop there. Is it gentrification stalemate? Fall classes at the studio include Beginning Portrait and Figure Painting, Beginning Drawing and Illustration, and Introduction to Oil Painting. And as long as you're in the area, you can always celebrate that new canvas with a Jacques Torres hot chocolate. creativelywildartstudio.com

For Children and Teens

The rest of the world calls it football, but because we've saved that term for a sport played by burly men using their hands, we'll go ahead and refer to this particular pastime as soccer. Many schoolchildren play it, and if you'd like to give yours a couple of legs up, you can enroll him or her in Soccer School, an indoor training facility at Upper 90 in Cobble Hill. Hour-long classes include warm-ups, games, drills, and tactical exercises. u90soccer.com

Mozart was crafting symphonies practically as soon as he could eat solids, Picasso sketching almost from the moment he could grasp a pencil. So why not start your own prodigy early with classes at Mini Hands in Williamsburg? The studio offers art and music classes for tots 18 months and older, as well as the chance to learn Mandarin, because it's never too early to advance kiddies into the global economy. They also offer parties. myminihands.com

Film/Video

You could attempt to break into the movie biz by writing mash notes to famed directors, making the rounds of casting couches, or inventing a superior variety of popcorn. Or you could simply learn how to make great movies. The 12-week Evening Filmmaking course at the International Film Institute of New York in Riverdale focuses on four elements: writing for the screen, directing, production, and post-production. Students will emerge with a short film in HD. nyfilmschool.com

Food and Drink

Who could have predicted that a simple assemblage of flour, water, tomato, and cheese (maybe a little pepperoni if you're feeling indulgent) could fuel an entire city? And surely if every corner pizzaiolo can manage it, you should be able to learn to make the wondrous stuff yourself at the Goodfellas Pizza School of New York on Staten Island. Designed for serious students, the school offers a five-day class, a two-week class incorporating management training, and the master class, which covers dessert pizza and calzone and forces students to roll 1,000 balls of dough. pizzaschoolnewyork.com