Join Us!

The Nutcracker Suite

Friday, December 11th and Saturday, December 12th, 2009

7pm

William Monroe Middle School
Stanardsville, VA


$7 adults/ $5 children

Join us for our annual production of The Nutcracker Suite! This holiday event features our shortened version of the traditional classical ballet, a post-performance reception with hot cocoa and refreshments, and a chance to have your picture taken with the Sugar Plum Fairy, danced by Heather Lively of Charlottesville Ballet!

We look forward to seeing you there!!!

Gearing up for The Nutcracker!

This is a photo from the photo shoot we did for The Nutcracker. We used it for our poster this year. It's a picture of the girl who's playing Clara (for those who don't know the story). More posts will follow as we head into Nutcracker season. Stay tuned!!!

Introducing: Mr. Keaton!

It's been a long time coming, but here is our last installment of Meet the Teacher, featuring our hip hop teacher Mr. Keaton Rodland!

Keaton is a Greene County native, and I originally heard about him through our old intern at the farm, who is a friend of his. I contacted him a year ago but he was headed off to Boston. After a year there he missed the idyllic beauty and serenity of Greene County and came back. And then, lo and behold, I ran into him at the Farmer's Market! I was so excited to hear he was back!!!

I immediately began plotting how to get him teaching for me...

Luckily for all of us, he agreed, and now we have hip hop at The Dance Barn!!! The kids' class (ages 8+) and the adult/teen class are both running, and there are spots open in each. Everyone loves the talent and enthusiasm he brings to his classes! Plus there are the cartwheels and backflips...can it get any better? So come join us!!

As always, here's the official bio as well!

***********************************************************

Keaton Rodland discovered choreographed dance at the age of 4 when he was signed up for tap class in Charlottesville. After taking a short hiatus to pursue a t-ball career he performed in Four County's The Nutcracker, and then started taking a hip-hop class at Orange School of Performing Arts. From there his love of breakdancing unfolded. His teachers and friends supported his interest and taught him what they knew about b-boys and the culture (B-boy = Break Boy = Breakdancer). Keaton has won regional title awards at dance competitions including Star Power and Star Systems. In addition to hip-hop, Keaton has studied jazz, ballet, modern and tap. He has danced with some b-boy legends as well as modern hip-hop choreographers. Keaton attended Boston University for a year studying acting/performing (Class of 2012), but soon thirsted for country air and the possibility of dancing out in nature. He knows we've all heard it, but wants everyone to remember that when dancing...Have Fun!

Please Vote for Us!!!

Albemarle Family Magazine, a local print/online resource for all things family oriented in the Charlottesville area, is conducting a Favorites survey. One of the entries is Favorite Dance School, and I'd like to ask all my loyal readers (all 5 or ten of you!) to head over there and vote for us.

This is a pretty cool opportunity to get our name out there to more people than ever, and an easy way to support us in this amazing adventure! Here's the link: Albemarle Family Favorites Survey

Thanks for your help!

Nutcracker Auditions

For those of you who may not have heard, I had a baby last week! We had a boy and everyone is doing very well. In any case, today was my first day back in the studio, for NUTCRACKER AUDITIONS!!! They went SO well. I am very excited about the group this year and am looking forward to a great show.

Casting was much easier this year, and we pretty much settled on the casting right after auditions. I will sit with it for a day or two before announcing the final cast, but it's exciting how easily it fell into place.

So come see the show in December!!!! It's going to be great!

Introducing: Mr. Tom!

Okay, this one's kind of a cheater Meet the Teacher, since Tom is part owner of the studio and has already been teaching here since the beginning, and oh yeah, is also my husband, but he's teaching more this year, so I figured he was worth a blog post. plus it gives me time to plug our new classes that he's teaching!

I first met Tom in 1995, and on a random whim invited him to a ballroom class I had attended only once (with my parents). He was an engineering student at Northeastern University at the time, and agreed to go only because he liked me, and then he wound up actually enjoying himself. Over the years he has danced and competed with the Northeastern Ballroom Dance Team, studied at private ballroom studios, and taught at several studios as well. Until we opened The Dance Barn, this was sort of a side hobby, although one he loved, but when we opened the studio it was a no-brainer that he'd teach some ballroom here.

Thus our Social Dance Night was born! You can read more about it here!

Last year, in response to some requests, we offered a short term of Kids' Ballroom. Although we had a small turnout, the kids who took the class loved it and Tom enjoyed teaching them. He was amazed at what a different experience it was to teach kids versus adults, and we decided to offer the class for our full season this year.

In addition to Social Dance Night and Kids' Ballroom, Tom will be teaching Boys' Creative Dance this year. I am incredibly excited to be offering this class. I have noticed over the years that in general, there is a difference between the ways that boys and girls learn, particularly when they are younger. I have always wanted to build a boys' dance program, but have found that many parents don't even consider registering their sons for dance, and those that do sometimes worry about them being the only boy in class. I am hoping that by offering a class just for boys, that we can tailor the class to boys' learning styles while providing them with an environment that makes boys taking dance seem entirely normal. I think having a male teacher will help the boys relate to men dancing in a direct way.

Tom's bio is available on our website, and I will re-post it below. You know, just in case I haven't given you enough information above!

*************************************************

Tom Silliman (Mr. Tom) began dancing when Kelly brought him to a ballroom dance lesson in 1995. He joined the ballroom dance team at Northeastern University in Boston, MA, from which he holds a BS in electrical engineering. During and after college, Tom (and eventually Kelly) participated in ballroom dance competitions around the New England area. Throughout his career as a Systems Administrator/IT Manager for various companies, Tom has continued to dance and teach ballroom and social dancing professionally, including working with couples to choreograph wedding dances. Tom and Kelly last performed at First Night in Charlottesville 2007. Having recently left the corporate world, Tom teaches social dancing at The Dance Barn and heads up the adventures in farming at Sweet Dog Farm.

Introducing: Miss Ariadne!

Today's Meet the Teacher features The Dance Barn's very own Miss Ariadne. Ariadne is a returning teacher this year, having taught our Ballet III class last year, as well as assisting with our first annual production of The Nutcracker.

I first met Ariadne as the Artistic Director of Charlottesville Ballet, when they were looking for rehearsal space. As a new studio, I immediately recognized the advantage of having a local professional company rehearsing here four days a week. In addition, I have always thought the Charlottesville area could support a ballet company, and never understood why there wasn't one thriving here already. I was excited to do what I could to support this fledgling company, and we worked out a schedule and contract for the 2008-2009 season.

As I worked with Ariadne in this capacity, I was impressed with her beliefs and principles related to ballet training, and asked her to teach my intermediate/advanced ballet class for the year, and to help with The Nutcracker. I am so glad she has stayed with us this year, and am looking forward to her taking on our entire ballet program for the year! We will also be working on this year's production of The Nutcracker together (I do love me some Nutcracker!!!).

As Artistic Director of Charlottesville Ballet, Ariadne will be here at lot this year, and they have an exciting season coming up. We are thrilled they are still rehearsing here, and look forward to being able to watch their creative process as their repertory pieces develop. Oh, and in case I haven't babbled enough, Ariadne's official bio is below.

*******************************************

A Chicago native, Ariadne Conner spent many years traipsing across the country to various pre-professional schools. Spending summers at the Houston Ballet Academy, School of American Ballet, and Miami City Ballet in addition to intensive training at the Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet and Ballet Chicago during the year, Ariadne became steeped in the new tradition of George Balanchine. Ariadne relocated to Richmond, Virginia in 2003 to be a trainee with the Richmond Ballet. While a trainee, she had the opportunity to dance in Giselle, Swan Lake, Balanchine's Concerto Barocco, and original choreography by Richmond Ballet Faculty. In 2004 she became enamored with a new form of expression, choreography. She had the honor of choreographing two works on the Richmond Ballet Trainees before moving to Charlottesville. In 2007 she became the co-founder and Artistic Director of the Charlottesville Ballet. She is thrilled to be teaching at The Dance Barn and sharing her love of this art with all!

Introducing: Miss Emily!

Our second installment of Meet Our Teachers introduces Miss Emily. I met Emily when Charlottesville Ballet started rehearsing here at The Dance Barn, and instantly liked her friendly manner and admired her beautiful dancing. When I took class with the company, I was always impressed with how hard Emily worked--it was truly inspiring! She is also an amazing performer onstage, and wonderful with kids.

Emily will be teaching creative dance and jazz for the studio this year. I am excited to have her creative and nurturing spirit as part of our Dance Barn family, and I know her students will love her as much as I do! Oh yeah, and her official bio is also below. It probably sounds way more professional than my totally biased gushing, but what can I say? I hired people I really, really like!

***********************************************

Emily Mott fell in love with ballet at the age of five. She began dance classes at Roanoke Ballet Theatre in her hometown of Roanoke, VA and continued her training with Unurbat Gunaajav and Michele Goacher. While in the upper levels of her ballet school, Emily taught several creative movement classes and helped create an after school dance class for underprivileged children. She also performed in several collaborative shows with Opera Roanoke, the Mill Mountain Theatre, and with Radford University as the ‘Snow Queen’ in a joint production of The Nutcracker. She attended summer intensives at the Richmond Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, and on scholarship with the Dance Theatre of Harlem. Emily spent her senior year of high school at the Virginia School of the Arts in Lynchburg, VA under the late Petrus Bosman. There she found diverse training and valuable performance opportunities in various dance festivals, in lecture demonstrations for children, and at the Piccolo Spoleto Festival. Upon graduation she joined the Richmond Ballet as a Trainee, performing in Don Quixote, Balanchine’s Valse Fantasie and Who Cares?, and in many new works by Richmond Ballet faculty. She also enjoyed working with Richmond Ballet’s Minds In Motion, a pilot program for Richmond-area schools to incite a love of dance among youth. In 2008, Emily relocated to Charlottesville, VA to join the Charlottesville Ballet and to attend the University of Virginia, uniting both her artistic and academic interests. Emily is thankful to all who have made this journey possible and looks forward to sharing her ardor for dance with the students of The Dance Barn.

Introducing: Miss Heather!

Welcome to our brand new "Let's Meet the Teachers" series!

Today we meet Miss Heather, a newcomer to the teaching scene. I first met Heather last spring, when I was looking for a tap and/or jazz teacher for this year. She had been taking classes with Charlottesville Ballet (our resident company), and I had noticed what a fine dancer she was. A little birdie informed me that she was very interested in pursuing a teaching career, so I asked her to come do a couple sample classes.

She was wonderful!!! She had an instant rapport with the students, her classes were well planned and executed, and best of all, she was excited about the prospect of teaching here. I am so glad to have Heather as a part of our Dance Barn family, and look forward to a wonderful year of tap, jazz, and creative dance classes with her. Below is her official bio, which is lovely but not as much fun as me telling you how much I like her! Be sure to say "Hi!" when you see her in the studio!

*************************************

Heather Lively began dancing at the age of four with a local dance studio in Florida before moving to receive most of her training at South Georgia Performing Arts and Wilson School of Dance. While at SGPA, Heather performed in productions of The Nutcracker, Beauty and the Beast, Sleeping Beauty, and Coppelia. Heather has studied jazz, tap, and ballet extensively, and spent the last two years as an assistant dance teacher. She is very excited to start her teaching career at The Dance Barn, and is also thrilled to be apprenticing with Charlottesville Ballet this year.

WE HAVE HIP HOP!!!

Just a quick post to let everyone know that after a year and a half long search, we have found a hip hop teacher! We are very excited to have Greene County native Keaton Rodland joining us on Tuesday evenings for Hip Hop I (ages 10+) at 7pm!!!

We will begin as early as next week depending on registration, so if you have any interest, call or e-mail the studio for details.

Also, if there is sufficient interest in an adult/teen class, we will offer that on Tuesdays at 8pm. I already have two people on the waiting list, so we only need three more to start the class.

Very exciting!!! More on Keaton and all our other teachers coming very soon!

Quick Picture Post

These two photos are from our Creative Dance Recital in May. The first one shows the students frozen in "interesting shapes" during one of our improvisation exercises:



This second one is one of my favorites. Students love dancing with scarves, and I love how the camera captured the movement of the scarves as the students moved through the space:


More pictures and posts to come! Stay tuned!!!

PICTURES!!!

Hi everyone!

I finally (FINALLY) got photos off my camera dating back to April, and I have a ton I want to share. For now, I will post two of my favorites from the Children's Dance Festival held every year in April. Five Dance Barn students participated in the event, which brings together studios from all over the area to perform together. It's run by Miki Lizst, who has a company in Charlottesville and has been producing this Festival for 24 years! It was a great experience for the students, and an event we hope to participate in again in years to come.


These students were Mint Patties in our production of The Magic Candy Shop, but we re-named the dance Echoes of the Sea for this show. The music, by local group Zephyrus, was a capella women's voices, and absolutely beautiful.


These students, who played Candy Canes in The Magic Candy Shop, danced to music by Stuart Gunter, another local musician (and friend!) who freelances all over the place and also works with Sandalwood Studios. The kids LOVED this piece, called 3rd Dimension, and we re-named the dance Triple Helix for this performance.

There are more pictures to come, so please check back!

The Dance Barn Newsletter: Fall Registration and an exciting offer!!!

(This is the e-mail I just sent out to (almost) everyone on our e-mail list)

Hello Dance Barn Dancers and Parents (and those who made it onto this list for other reasons)!

I hope this e-mail finds you well and that all your summers have been fabulous. Mine was full of lots of farming, some dancing, and growing a baby (still inside me as of this e-mail!). I am very excited about the coming year, and want to share a few things with you as we head into registration time.

Classes begin Saturday, September 5th! Registration is ongoing, so if you miss the beginning of classes (or you know someone who hears about us after classes begin), please know that you can still sign up as long as there is room in the class. (But see the amazing offer below for those who register early!)

August Registration Hours: Although you can always register by mail, we are having office hours the last two weeks of August, beginning August 18th, as follows: Tuesday through Thursday, 3-7pm, Saturday 10-2 pm. Please feel free to register then, or just stop in to say Hi!

CRAZY AWESOME OFFER from Virginia Discovery Museum!!! The Virginia Discovery Museum is partnering with local schools and studios to offer all Fall 2009 students a FREE six week family membership to the museum! This is an amazing offer and for those of you who are not familiar with the museum (located on the Downtown Mall in Charlottesville), it is a great place to take kids, especially on rainy or cold days. Anyone who registers for classes by August 31st will be eligible, so please let me know when you register if you'd like a pass for your child.

Adult Classes: Although we focus primarily on children's dance, it is very important to us to have an adult program as well. We understand that adults' schedules often make it difficult to register for a year at a time, and take that into consideration when we structure our classes. We offer a social/ballroom class every Thursday evening from 7-10pm. Social Dance Night teaches beginning and intermediate ballroom in a fun and relaxed environment where we focus on leading and following and helping you feel comfortable on the dance floor. No partner or experience is necessary, and the class is drop-in, which means you can come as often as you want and pay per class. We are also offering Adult Dance for eight weeks in October and November, and this class will be some combination of ballet/jazz/conditioning, based on what those who register are looking for.

The Nutcracker Suite: We will be producing our second annual version of The Nutcracker this year, and auditions will be held Saturday, September 12th from 2:30-4:30pm. Auditions are open to any student who is or will be registering for ballet class at The Dance Barn, and all students who audition will be cast. Some of you have noticed on our schedule that we are having Friday rehearsals as well. These Friday rehearsals are optional, and may or may not last the entire semester. When students audition, they will be asked if they can attend any portion of the Friday rehearsal, or if they can only make the mandatory Saturday rehearsals. There is no extra charge for Fridays, but the ability to attend may affect casting. Participation in The Nutcracker is $125 and must be paid on the first day of rehearsals, Saturday, September 19th.

New Students should look for our ad in this week and next week's Greene County Record (also Madison and Orange papers) and bring in the ad for a free Social Dance Night class or to waive your registration fee! Please pass the word!

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this e-mail. I am really looking forward to seeing all our returning students, as well as welcoming the new ones who will join us this year! I think this is going to be quite a year of growth for us, and we are so glad to be a part of this community. Thank you to everyone who supports us!!!

Falling in Love with Dance!

My very first dance class was held in a gymnastics studio. My teacher, Miss Margot, was tall and elegant and very nice. I remember doing tick-tock clocks across the floor (although I can't remember quite HOW we did them). I think I was four. I do remember our recital, where we played Duck Duck Goose as part of the "show."

When I first saw the picture above, I thought it absolutely captured the simplicity and innocence of the first dance class. When students come in for their first class, they are excited and nervous and are usually there because they love to move their bodies. They are also so proud to show off their favorite moves. I love watching them that first day, and then as the year goes by, watching them develop a stronger sense of their bodies and what they can do.

Teaching little kids is not for everyone, and I have not always had good experiences with it. In one studio years ago, I had to teach up to 12 or 14 3-year-olds by myself, switching from ballet to jazz to tap in the span of an hour. It was disastrous! When I opened The Dance Barn, I decided to cap my 45-minute creative dance classes at 8 students to ensure that all students had the time and attention they deserved. I also re-examined how different kids' classes are taught, and consulted with an old mentor whose methods I respect, and structured my classes based on creative movement technique. I now LOVE teaching the youngest groups of students just as much as I love my other classes.

What I want for my students is for that first moment of falling in love with dance to return to them time and again over the years. It's the joy in moving that keeps me going, and I wish that for my students as well!


(The above photo is courtesy my dance friend Lisa Eller, who is a fabulous massage therapist in Charlottesville, VA.)

Social Dance Night at The Dance Barn

Social Dance Night is our weekly ballroom class, which began in May 2008 and has been held every week since (except holidays). Tom began ballroom dancing on a whim when I dragged him to a class my parents were attending just after we met, and then he continued going to classes on his own. I will be totally honest with you--he was no natural! I say this only to encourage people who feel awkward on the dance floor, because you would never know it to see him dance now.

Anyway, ballroom proved to be a great outlet for him during college, and later he wound up teaching for a few months between jobs, and loved it. He later taught for about a year in Charlottesville before our third daughter was born, and so of course when we opened the studio we wanted to include regular ballroom classes as part of our offerings. The one thing that Tom never loved about the ballroom world was the competition. Oh, we're not knocking it--it can be so much fun to get all dressed up and work on a routine and show off on the floor. But what we like even better is just getting out on the dance floor and having fun, chatting and laughing with no pressure to be perfect.

A lot of people think they can't dance, and we believe this is because people aren't taught to dance socially anymore. It's not just about the steps, but about knowing how to lead and follow, and being comfortable enough with that to be able to talk with the person you're dancing with at the same time. You need a familiarity with a few dances, but you don't need to know every single step of every single dance to have a great time.

So what we focus on in our weekly lessons is just that: social dancing, leading and following, and cretaing a sense of ease on the dance floor, all while having a great time. We have had a lot of luck with this class (in fact, we've never had a night when no one showed up, which is exciting for an adult class in a new studio in such a small town), but recently we have had a small but extremely steady group who all expressed wanting a few more people in class.

So please tell everyone you know about Social Dance Night! The best part is, it's a drop-in class, so there's no committment. For $15 per person you can come whenever it works for you. We are here every Thursday night from 7-10pm (sometimes we end around 9pm if people are tired) and we rotate dances monthly. This month we are teaching samba (so fun!) and tango. We'd love to see you there!!!

Sunday Recycling

For the past year, I've been getting up to 3 e-mails per month about our floor. People find the post I did on this blog in spring of 2008 about building our sprung dance floor and write to ask me questions about the building process, or where we got the foam blocks, etc. I always take the time to respond because I remember how helpful other people were when we were building.

Anyway, I've always been curious at the high number of inquiries related to such a relatively obscure blog, so today I did a little Googling, and it turns out that if you Google dance floor and foam blocks, we pop up on the first page. Pretty cool!

Re-reading the post brought back the many fun memories of that crazy day, and so I am recycling the post by linking to it here. There are lots of pictures, and it's actually a pretty interesting process. It was the biggest part of opening up the dance studio, but so important to me (saving my poor, aging joints, that is), and it was worth every penny and every drop of sweat shed!

Saturday Quick Post

Check out the updated website at www.dancebarn.net! The fall schedule is up in a more easily navigable format, and there are pictures on the front page! Wooo hooo!!!

More information about registration, teachers, auditions, etc to come soon...please visit us frequently!

Dance Barn Poster 2009-2010

Here is an image of the poster I will be hanging all over Greene County, etc and hoping not to swell up too badly in the process. Anyone want to help?

We're Back!!!

Hello, whoever might still be checking in to this blog occasionally! It's been almost a year, but I am back and dedicated to keeping this blog current. It was recommended to me by a friend to disable this link, since it had been so long since I posted, but I actually get a surprising number of people asking me about our dance floor. Then today a friend (and mom of a student) made some suggestions that got me all inspired. So here we are!

So let me fill you in on our last year! We had an excellent turnout for registration before classes began, and students continued to join us throughout the year. We ended the year with just under 60 students, which feels like we're off to a GREAT start.

In December, we put on a shortened version of The Nutcracker Suite which was a huge success. We staged it in our studio theatre, which comfortably seats about 60 people, and we had almost 100 people each night. It was standing room only! And the dancers were amazing...they worked so hard over the fall months to put together a truly outstanding production. Here is a link to a wonderful article in our local paper about the show.

In the spring, we continued to add to our student body, and began working on dances for our Spring Showcase, The Magic Candy Shop. In addition, we were pleased to announce that I was (am) expecting a baby on or about September 3rd! Although I have danced throughout all of my three previous pregnancies, it was quite an adventure to be teaching so much, especially the bigger I got.

In May, at the end of our first "school year" of classes, we had two performances. The first was a creative dance recital, which was done class by class in our studio theatre. Each show was 15 minutes long, which gave the younger students a great performance opportunity without the pressure of a big stage experience.

The Magic Candy Shop, which featured our older students (all those taking ballet, tap, or jazz) was a very special production for me because it was the first dance recital I was ever in as a child. I was even able to use some of the costumes from the studio I grew up in, thanks to the generosity of my first ballet teacher. The students were again wonderful, and I was so proud of them. I even did a dance (at 6 months pregnant--yikes!), and we performed at the middle school across the street from the studio.

Since then, we have had two weeks of summer camps, which I taught, and now we are headed into registration time for the 2009-2010 dance year. Because of the baby who will join us soon, I will not be teaching classes this year, which will be bittersweet for me. However, I am very excited about the teachers I have hired and look forward to telling you more about them in future posts.

So stay tuned, folks, because there is lots more to come in the next few weeks, and then classes begin once again!!!