Anyone who doesn’t believe that arts education is important should spend some time with Jacques d’Amboise. When the former New York City Ballet Principal Dancer under George Balanchine and founder of the National Dance Institute was on campus in September, he talked about dance, music, history, mythology, poetry, cosmology and super conductors and particles, making it clear that while formal education may take up only a few years of one’s life, learning should never stop.

D’Amboise spent the week in the TCU School for Classical & Contemporary Dance as the Cecil H. and Ida Green Chair Professor in Dance, teaching workshops, giving lectures and directing a public performance with Horned Frog dance majors.

Calling the audience at one lecture “dear ones,” d’Amboise explained that one cannot be “learned” without the arts, because before writing and language, what did humanity have to tell the story of history? Only the arts.

He showed a video of one of his creations, “Puella Touches the Sun,” which depicts a young girl sacrificed to the sun and the celebration of the sun that followed. The children who danced in the piece learned about the Minotaur, Ariadne, and the history of sacrifices throughout time — all through music and dance.

After prompting the audience to join him in the discussion, they defined dance as “expression in movement,” “story-telling in movement” and “art with your body.”

D’Amboise combined these to describe dance as, “control of how we move our bodies to express emotion in time and space.

He said art and architecture — the ordering of matter — were the first things to exist. Movement precedes sound, he noted, humorously adding that it really was “the big move” that caused the big bang, and from that moment architecture took over.

D’Amboise quit school at age 15 and was a principal dancer under George Balanchine by the time he was 17. It wasn’t until later that he asked himself what he wanted to do and what dance really was.

D’Amboise formed the National Dance Institute in 1976 and has since been working with school children in New York City and across the country to combine music and art with studies of other cultures, histories and literature. His pupils get a unique and comprehensive performing arts experience, heightened curiosity and a sense of achievement, he said. The institute now has a 10-year contract with the Chinese government to train their teachers. It began in Shanghai with eight schools and will be in 800 schools at the end of the 10-year agreement.

D’Amboise shared humorous stories of his time as a dancer but also reminded those gathered that no one can capture “now.” He reminded them that each performance should be like your first and your last — when on stage, it is “now.” He also led intensive rehearsal sessions, which culminated with a public performance.

D’Amboise is considered one of finest classical dancers of the 20th century. In addition to his New York City Ballet career, he’s been associated with Broadway musicals, movie musicals (including Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and Carousel,) choreographer, director, producer, author, university faculty and dean. The 1984 PBS documentary, “He Makes Me Feel Like Dancin’,” about d’Amboise’s work with the National Dance Institute, won an Academy Award, six Emmy Awards, the Peabody Award, the Golden Cine Award, and the National Education Association Award for the advancement of learning through broadcasting.??

He has been honored with more than 30 national and international awards, including the Kennedy Center Honors, the 1990 MacArthur Fellowship, the National Medal of the Arts and more than 10 honorary doctoral degrees for his work as an artist and dance educator. His recently published memoir I Was a Dancer has enjoyed widespread critical acclaim.