The morning after virtuoso cellist Yo-Yo Ma performed for well-heeled Washingtonians last week at the Kennedy Center, he traveled across the Anacostia River to play for a different audience: students at Savoy Elementary, a long-struggling school in one of the city's poorest neighborhoods.

Ma and Damian Woetzel, a former principal with the New York City Ballet, spent more than an hour in a classroom with students, dancing, playing music and rehearsing pieces that they later performed on stage for the whole school.