As Hayley Heineken and other students in her sculpture course got their hands gray and gooey, the modal rhythm of “Arabian Dreams” wafted up the hallway from where the strings class was busy plucking away.

At the recent Department of Defense Dependents Schools’ Creative Connections workshop, students and art of all kinds mingled like paints on a palette. Those who come, said Sara Fisher, a senior at Ramstein High School in Germany, “all have an art-enveloping personality.”

The annual workshop allows art students to “take a break from high school and hang out with real people,” said Krystiana Hoehn, also of Ramstein. “I have more things in common with these people.”

For several days last month, artful teens tested the horizons without the demands of school and home. The workshop permits select students to delve uninterrupted into their respective discipline. They do so under the guidance of art teachers and paid instructors.

As is customary, the workshop offered 11 classes, each consisting of about 15 students. The disciplines this year featured dance, drama, show choir, strings, percussion, oil pastels, sculpture, multidimensional drawing, spherical drawing, contemporary printmaking and video production.

Students must apply for a spot, but for every three who get accepted, two don’t make the grade. Some students noted they were back for a second or third time, adding that the workshop is one school function they look forward to every year. The sessions also serve to augment the art and music curriculum DODDS still offers.

“It’s exhausting, and it’s energizing,” said Kathy Terveen, an art teacher at AFNORTH High School in Brunssum, Belgium.

Energizing is the perfect word to describe this year’s workshop.

If threads and hairstyles are any indication, many young minds seemed liberated from the bonds of convention. Whether it was red hair, ponytails, zany shirts or purple plush bedtime slippers, it all seemed in some way to help fuel the engine of creativity, though sometimes it was just plain practical.

“I wear [purple slippers] after dancing because my feet get so tired,” said Kristen O’Callaghan, a 14-year-old freshman from Naples, Italy.

One of the enduring benefits of the annual workshop is that students are encouraged again and again to push and test their limits.

Brittany Weeks, a freshman at Bamberg High School in Germany, danced with Kristen. Brittany thought her course would be more instructional, but was pleasantly surprised how she and the other dancers were encouraged to help choreograph their dance number.

“The kids here are very generous,” said Linda Dahlstrom, a Spanish and dance instructor from Vicenza, Italy. “They are open-minded. They are risk-takers.”

Getting students to take risks is a challenge workshop instructors and teaching assistants face, Terveen said. After all, the workshop is about encouraging students to develop their skills beyond what is possible in their local schools.

Terveen, who taught contemporary printmaking, said students, like adults, often stick to what they know because it’s safe. The arts and artists don’t evolve, she said, unless there is exploration and experimentation.

Back where the student sculptors apply their plaster, Hayley Heineken is removing a cast from her right hand and forearm. The cast is for a figure she and three other students are creating as part of a class project.

“I had to let it dry while we were taking the group pictures,” she said.

At the time, the four figures the class was creating were just beginning to take shape. The ambiguity didn’t bother their teacher, Marjorie Rodman, who works for DODDS at its office in Wiesbaden, Germany.

“What I like,” Rodman said, “is that there are no right answers.”

Such freedom is something the students grabbed hold of and didn’t want to let go, according to Courtney Daniels, an instructor for the spherical drawing class.

On the first day, she said, “they didn’t want to leave when class was over. I literally had to take pencils out of their hands.”

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