National Festival Spotlights Regional Talent
Looks of disbelief and wonder had a number of Pittsburghers reaching for their cell phone cameras to capture the scene of over 1500 teenagers (mostly girls) dressed to kill walking en masse passed them. No, the city wasn't under siege by hoards of fashion models but by some of the nation's finest young dancers on their way to the closing Gala banquet of Regional Dance America's 2007 National Festival held this past April 24-28.
The Festival was the culmination of a yearlong celebration of RDA's 50-year anniversary. For only the second time in the organization's history, its five annual Regional Festivals (Pacific, Midstates, Northeast, Sothwest, and Southeast) were combined into one national event. A leader in the advancement of regional dance in the United States, RDA's annual Festivals is a valuable tool in furthering the growth and development of its 92 member companies. Giving them the opportunity to interact and network with their peers via master classes and performance showcases. This year's National Festival took that regional Festival model one step further by bringing together RDA member companies from every region for 5-days of intense dance training, performance, and discovery.
"This was really different from our regional Festival in that here you didn't see the same dancers in every class and you didn't take from the same teachers everyday," said 22-year-old Kathryn Derby of California's Petaluma City Ballet.
"Meeting other dancers from other regions has helped me to open up as a person," added 18-year-old Claire Carlisle of Georgia's Roswell Dance Theatre.
Of the many sites looked at for the Festival the city of Pittsburgh got the nod says RDA president Gretchen Vogelzang, because of its affordability and ease of access to a number of hotels and venues within walking distance of each other. Downtown venues such as The David L. Lawrence Convention Center and the Benedum Center for the Performing Arts provided an abundance of studio space for the more than 200 classes held during the Festival. The majority of studio spaces were equipped with marley covered sprung floors, ballet bars, and plenty of room for the average class size of 60 plus dancers.
Leading the rigorous 8-hour-a-day schedule of Ballet, Jazz, Modern, and Pointe classes were nearly 40 of the top dance instructors and musical accompanists working today including Juilliard's Stephen Pier, Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre ballet mistress Marianna Tcherkassky, former Broadway star Jill Powell, and international teaching legend Laura Alonzo.
"The training was awesome," said 15-year-old Allyssa Bross of the North Carolina Dance Theatre Repertory Ensemble. "You got to work with new teachers and learn how to adapt to different teaching styles."
I had the opportunity to witness some of those different teaching styles in several of the Festival's classes. Here is a sampling of what I observed:
In Stephen Pier's ballet class dancers were encouraged to "to work that space behind you" in reference to them keeping their form while traveling backward; Pier wanting them to feel what they could not see. In another ballet class taught by former American Ballet Theatre star Marianna Tcherkassky, she told her group to "do dégagé like your legs were 6-feet long." While over in choreographer Margo Sappington's pointe class a boom box belted out music by Ella Fitzgerald as Sappington had her students swatting at imaginary insects in front of their faces at the beginning of a jazz-ballet combination. In Troy Powell's modern class, an animated Powell belted out "Bam Bam, sock it to them!" encouraging his students to "let loose like Beyoncé" in a lively butt shaking and arm pumping dance combination.
Along with the challenge of teaching larger than usual class sizes, the Festival's teaching faculty also had to deal with teaching dancers in the same classes at varying skill levels.
"It wasn't really a problem for most of us," said veteran RDA instructor Judy Rice. "I tried to make my classes applicable to all levels while still making them challenging."
While the daily master classes offered many of the Festival's participants educational eaperineces they may not have gotton in their hometowns, it was the the Festival's nightly performance showcases that a majortiy of the dancers I talked to really looked forward to.
Each evening at the Benedum Center, 16-18 companies from each region performed short works in front of packed houses of enthusiastically supportive audience members. Here are a few highlights of the many fine works presented during the final three nights of performance showcases:
On Thursday, April 26th Louisiana's Twin City Ballet breathed life into Joe Istre's "Blow By Blow," a contemporary dance work that had the company's 6 dancers seemingly blowing each other about the stage with exhales of air, while Huntsville (Alabama) Ballet Company's Ashynne Nelson and David Kiyak were visions of grace in Clinton Rothwell's tender pas de deux "Pathos" and Ohio's Ashland Regional Ballet revealed a Spanish flair in Robert Wesner's "Rezo Que Asoma." On Friday, April 27th Ohio's Canton Ballet mixed neo-classical ballet with an opera feel in Angelo Lemmo's moving "Whispers," Florida's Fort Lauderdale Ballet Classique showed brilliance in an excerpt of "Le Corsaire," and Southeast Alabama Dance Company juxtiposed music video-style choreography with classical ballet in Ashlie Wells' "Twisted". Saturday, April 28th's Gala Perfomance produced several more impressive performances including Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet in Alan Hineline's "Rococo Variations," West Virgina's Inwood Dance Company in Lauri Stallings contemporary gem "Port of Call," Utah Regional Ballet in Heather Gray's atmospheric "Rhythm and One" and Georgia's Metropolitan Ballet Theatre in Gerald Arpino's "Viva Vivaldi."
Beyond master classes and performances, the Festival's activities also included several seminars on nutrition and injury prevention, scholarship auditions, and several delightful receptions and dancer parties.
Ten years in the making and costing upwards of $750,000, Regional Dance America's National Festival, by all accounts proved a hit said Roswell Dance Theatre Founder and Artistic Director Nancy Tolbert-Yilmaz. "I was extremely impressed with the organization of the Festival and how it went off like clockwork". A sentiment echoed by North Carolina Dance Theatre Repertory Ensemble co-director Darleen Callaghan who added, "It was a wonderful opportunity for our kids to meet and learn from teachers and dancers from beyond our region."
And while some Pittsburghers were merely impressed by the numbers of dancers flooding downtown streets, the biggest impression was left on those who participated in the Festival and who witnessed the abundance of young talent from all over the country.
For more information on Regional Dance America and its annual Festivals, visit www.regionaldanceamerica.org.