Welcome back students and staff to what promises to be an action packed April after a well deserved March/Easter break. Hopefully families that left Calgary over the past two weeks had a restful time away and travelled safely. If you stuck around the city, hopefully there was time to reconnect with friends and family and treat yourselves to some of the events and activities that Calgary has to offer at this time of year.
Things were not totally shut down at Absolute Dance over the past few weeks. On March 25th, we welcomed a group of dancers ages 3 - 6 to our March Break half day camps. We had a great time doing creative movement, jazz, ballet, hip hop, musical theatre, arts and crafts, and story time. It was great to see many familiar faces return to our camps and to welcome new ones into our studio. We finished up with a small demonstration of dances on the 29th and were so pleased to have such a large turn out from our audiences. The dancers did a great job with their crafts as well. One of the more exciting projects we did was some ceramic painting made possible by the folks at Fire Escape, a local pottery painting studio. Special thanks goes out to our camp assistants who kept the little ones engaged and busy throughout the week.
Over the holiday we were also happy to see some of our competitive dancers continue their training on their own here at the studio. It was great to see dancers take the initiative to come in, run their numbers and stay on top of their fitness level and keep choreography and corrections fresh in their minds. Practice and rehearsal will only make things better. You will only get out what you give in so you might as well give it all you got! Your hard work does not go unnoticed.
An exciting announcement went out just before we went on holidays. We unveiled our Holiday Production for 2013! On December 1st Absolute Danee will be presenting The Wizard of Oz. This full-scale production will feature dancers ages 4 - 18 from both our recreational and competitive streams. Not only do these productions give dancers another opportunity to perform on stage, but it adds a storytelling element to dancing which may or may not be present in the material a dancer would focus on in a recital numbers. A project of this size also gives the younger dancers a chance to see older dancers at work. It is great for generating a sense of teamwork and community. There is a lot of work involved but dancers are left with lasting memories and a sense of accomplishment.
Although it is a story that most people are familiar with, you'd be surprised to know that The Wizard of Oz has never been done on a large scale by a professional ballet company. This means that we have a huge task ahead of us as we work to put together music, develop which parts of the story line and characters we want to highlight and what concepts we want to experiment with in order to make the production unique to Absolute Dance. This opportunity is open to anyone enrolled in a full-year ballet class and is available on a sessional (10 week) basis, or for the full year as part of a special performance based class. We encourage you to chat with the office if you are interested. Last year's production of Alice in Wonderland was a huge success and we are very excited with where we can go with this upcoming production. If you don't join us onstage, then we hope to see you in the audience!
As we venture into April get ready for an on slot of information! Between our new schedule, registration, pictures, competitions, recital and summer session/camps, there are many important dates you'll want to highlight on your calenders.
April 12th - Graded Royal Academy of Dance Exams held at Absolute Dance. Best of luck to all our candidates entering for their Grade 2, 3, or 5 exam!
April 15th - Our schedule of classes for 2013/2014 will be available
April 20th - Our competitive season gets underway with "Dance Stars" held at The Edge School.
- Recital packages will be sent home.
April 23rd - 27th - Our competitive team will attend "Champions" held at the University of Calgary campus.
May 1st - Registration for Fall programs open to the general public.
Tickets for our Year-End Recitals go on sale through the Wright Theatre box office. We've got 4 shows scheduled for June 9th. Our Junior shows entitled, Get Up and Go! will take place at 10am and 1pm. Our Senior shows, Dancing on Air, are scheduled for 4pm and 7pm. Tickets can be purchased by calling 403-440-7770 or by visiting www.tickets.mtroyal.ca. Parents be sure to get your tickets quickly as these shows will sell out!
Come May, we will be sending dancers home with their recital costumes which need to remain in their garment bag and are not to be worn until our recital is over. Dancers will have to be in full costume for pictures which are scheduled for the week of May 27th at Absolute Dance.
Please stay tuned for more important dates for the month of May which will be listed in the blog posting next month. As we get closer to summer and you start to think about how you want to keep your dancer busy, Absolute Dance is excited to be welcoming some fabulous teachers to our June Bootcamp, August Intensive and Summer Camps. Adults, we are also excited to announce that our 6 week summer session (June 10 - July 18) will essentially give you an all-access pass to attend any dance or fitness class throughout the week for only $94.50. Don't miss out!
Hold on to your tights! April is the month where we finally get to see the results of all our hard work that has taken place throughout the year. Dancers stay well rested, healthy, and eat nutritious meals and snacks. We look forward to a very exciting month!
Sincerely,
Madame Jete
No comments:
Post a Comment