Education & Classes in Ridgefield

NYC Wine Company, a New York magazine Critics' Pick, is widely respected for its fun, insightful wine-education classes. Beware of other wine schools, such as Franzia Academy, whose wine-academy brochure boasts:

Perfect your strum technique playing "Hurricane" by Bob Dylan on one NYC Guitar School's tuned and pretty-stringed guitars. This Groupon includes a guitar rental for duration of the course (a $50 value), so you don't need to bring your own (the security deposit is $189, and you get it back when you return the guitar). No prior musical experience is necessary to take a course at NYC Guitar School, and no note reading is required; one of the friendly teachers, well-tabbed in Bob Dylan, will teach you the fundamental chords, strums, and the fierce stare of a master guitarist.

Providing graduates with lifetime job placement assistance on a local and national level, the professional shot-pourers at Authentic Bartending School train future bartenders and amateur mixologists in the fine art of drink-making. Their seminars propel learners into the world of free-hand, multi-liquor, and trick pouring, and a 16-hour course demonstrates how to make Manhattans, cream-based drinks, and frozen drinks, among others. Covering customer service and state laws—which forbid serving beer to bears on Sunday—the 16-hour course serves as a launching pad into the full 40-hour certification course, including a lifetime of refresher classes.

Each day during the Story Improv workshop, students ages 5–8 will enact the adventures of a children's storybook. The On the Spot: Improvisation session, best for students 8–14, will have students acting without scripts in order to build their quick wit and confidence. During the intensive two-week Piece Makers class, budding actors, playwrights, and directors ages 8–14 will create and perform their own original piece of theater. After learning many of the exercises and games used by the Irondale Theater Company, the class will become its own acting troupe and debut their show. This workshop includes pizza dinner for the players followed by post-performance refreshments for all.

A graduate of the Natural Gourmet Institute, Naturally-Tasty's chef Gilda Mulero specializes in natural and organic foods. Her menus highlight seasonal dishes, which she sometimes tailors to fit diabetic and ayurvedic cooking practices. Rather than confine her talents to a restaurant, she travels to customers’ homes as a personal chef, crafting meals, teaching cooking lessons, and house-training new stoves. At each visit, her seasonal menus highlight international dishes as diverse as pecan-crusted chicken, potato-carrot pancakes, red snapper with corn-mango salsa, Argentine vegetable stew, and apricot-maple scones.

Gilda develops custom lesson plans, menus, and schedules based on a customer-submitted questionnaire, which details clients’ food likes, dislikes, and dietary needs. Her regular classes may focus on easy meals, basic kitchen skills, or cooking for children or newlyweds, and past classes have taught students how to make homemade organic baby food, reinvent their pantry contents, and perfect their knife techniques. All classes include copies of recipes from the lesson, and some involve educational tours to local markets that highlight which goods to choose and which food samplers are the easiest to bribe. When she isn’t cooking, Gilda also teaches private all-levels yoga lessons, in which she teaches the deep, fluid poses and stretches of the Vinyasa style in a calming, nurturing environment.

Drawing on big- and small-screen success, such as appearances in Tom Selleck's Her Alibi and on Late Show with David Letterman, as well as more than 25 national commercials, acting guru Mark Stolzenberg transforms amateurs into screen-savvy performers at The Acting School for Film and Television. Thespians hone their acting chops through monologues, improvisations, and cold readings in Mark's classes, preparing for time spent on the stage or the big screen. Essentials classes introduce neophyte film actors to the intricacies of playing to the camera, whereas advanced pupils refine their techniques by co-starring in a two-person short film directed by Stolzenberg, learning to handle more difficult scene work and larger crowds of crazed fans. For more targeted practice, Mark hosts one-on-one, on-camera coaching sessions to prep audition material or monologues for upcoming performances.