Golden Festival The 2006 Regional Dance America Northeast Festival
Even the threat of a tornado that had Festival faculty members huddled in an Ashland University boiler room couldn't spoil an opening night reception for what would be a memorable 2006 Regional Dance America Northeast Festival. Hosted by Ohio's Ashland Regional Ballet this past May, the event celebrated the 50th anniversary of RDA and its Northeast Festival.
The tornado warning far from being an ominous sign of troubles to come, served rather to galvanize the spirits of the Festival's first-time organizers who delivered a well planned and well executed event worthy of RDA's golden anniversary.
Over 275 dancers, directors, teachers and chaperones from Ohio, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New Hampshire converged on the small Midwest town of Ashland and scenic Ashland University for a three-day intensive of classes, comradeship, and performances.
For ARB artistic director Hellie Schussler, Festival chair Becky Barnes and co-chair Barbee Thomas who spent 2-years planning the $160,000 Festival, the event, which began as a labor of love, turned into a major boon in the company's visibility.
"I think our community is looking at ARB in a different light," said Schussler. "With the Festival they saw more of what we are about and that we are something for the community to be proud of. It is my hope the attention the Festival has garnered us will translate into a future boost in audience numbers."
An RDA "Honor Company," ARB had never hosted a Festival up until this year and when the original host company for 2006 had to bow out, Schussler felt it was finally the right time for ARB to step up to the plate.
Barnes was tapped to head up the financial and facility planning while Schussler and Thomas took care of programming and hiring faculty. Schussler said the search for faculty and accompanists began with a pool of dance professionals she and Thomas already knew. They then looked to others they really wanted to work with to fill-out their faculty roster. That roster included such noted instructors as Laura Alonzo, Marcus Alford, Nina Danilova, Jody Fugate, and Warren Conover as well as accompanists Yoland Collin, Valentina Slutsky, and Jeff Story.
The Festival offered daily classes in such core disciplines as ballet, jazz and modern as well as classes in Rhythm & Tango, Caractere, and Variations.
"It is very easy to teach here," said Warren Conover, North Carolina School of the Arts assistant dean/school of dance. "There is a circle of energy between the teachers, accompanists and students that is very uplifting."
Conover said his philosophy to teaching his classes at RDA was to challenge the students. "You need to push a dancer's level so they are not working at a comfortable one," said Conover. "You don't have to teach down to your students. It is about teaching up."
Benefactors of Conover's teaching philosophy and similar efforts of the other faculty members were felt by 13-year-old Rachel Balla of Berks Ballet Theatre who said her training at the Festival improved her extension and pirouettes, and 15-year-old Jordan Dellapina of Canton Ballet boasted having performed her very first pas de deux.
"No matter how many festivals you go to you can always learn something," said 17-year-old Meghan Taglang of Pennsylvania Regional Ballet. "Whether that means re-familiarizing yourself with a step you may have forgotten, learning a new one, or being exposed to a different style of dance."
At the Northeast Festival I observed several of the Festival's classes and here is a sampling of what some of them were like: In Jody Fugate's ballet class a group of nearly 50 dancers were instructed on the necessity of being able to execute movement combinations in multiple directions. In Marcus Alford's jazz class, Alford used humor and historical anecdotes to engage to his students offering such observations as, "Ballet is 2-dimensional sport while Jazz is 4-dimensional." While in Michelle Manzanales modern dance class, Manzanales and her students sprawled themselves out on an indoor tennis court surface and used yoga to warm themselves up and over at the gym, legendary ballet drill sergeant Laura Alonzo barked out instructions to a large group of dancers including "Force the palms of the hands up. The back and chest will follow in pirouettes."
The highlights for most Festival-goers as they are every year were the nightly performances. This year renowned choreographer and RDA veteran, Margo Sappington served as the Northeast Festival's performance adjudicator.
Over the three nights of the Festival works by emerging and veteran choreographers of varying styles were performed by the twelve participating dance companies at AU's Hugo Young Theatre. The best of the adjudicated works were given Gala status and performed on the last night of the Festival. Some of those works included Metropolitan Ballet Company's vibrant and energetic "Toward the Light" with choreography by Kanji Segawa, William B. McClellan JR's award-winning sensual powerhouse "Strength" performed by South Dayton Dance Theatre, and ARB's high-energy "Renewal" choreographed by ARB's own Robert Wesner which closed the program.
"There was a little bit of pressure being the Host Company and closing the Gala program," said Wesner. When adjudicator Margo Sappington came to evaluate his work Wesner admits to being more than a little nervous. "I felt like a school kid before a test and was shaking,"
said Wesner.
For Wesner, the rest of the ARB staff and volunteers that helped make the Festival happen, initial nervousness gave way to determination and a renewed sense of what RDA and the Northeast Festival was all about.
"Living in a small town in the Midwest you really have to work to find opportunities for your dancers to see what the larger dance world is like," said Schussler. "It's easy to think you are a pretty good dancer in your hometown until you see what is out there. Interacting with their peers some of whom they might someday be competing for jobs against at the Festival can be a real eye-opener for the students."
For most of its participants, RDA's Festivals such as this year's Northeast are as Schussler stated, an opportunity for young dancers to see what their peers are doing, evaluate themselves as dancers, and to learn from teachers they are not normally exposed to.
For small rural dance companies like ARB says Thomas, the RDA Festivals can also open doors to a national stage that might otherwise seem out of reach.
"Hellie (Schussler) is fond of saying 'you can get to there from here,'" said Thomas "Through participation in organizations like RDA several of our dancers have realized the dream of a professional career in dance."
In its 50th edition, RDA's Northeast Festival proved to be everything Regional Dance America has aspired for, a gathering of regional dance companies at its most grassroots level and the promotion of dance through education, performance, and coming together with one's peers.
"It was a great experience for me and my goal was to see that people had a good time and we did not lose money," said Barnes. In the end Barnes and company succeeded with both goals. The Festival made money and thanks to solid planning the response from those in attendance was overwhelmingly positive.
For information on Regional Dance America including information on its 2007 National Festival in Pittsburgh, visit www.regional-dance-america.org.