The Park City High School Dance Team is going to attend a national dance festival in Pittsburg in February. They hope to raise enough to bring all 14 members.
They need to raise $1500 per person. Their fund-raising efforts include a big reach out to the community by offering dance clinics to younger students. Dance Team member and Park City High School Senior, Clara Bradford says it’s a great chance to perform in front of crowds, not to mention how fun it is for the parents of the younger dancers.
“And then we have a lot of fundraisers. In January, we have our youth dance clinic which is where we teach kids from kindergarten to eighth grade a dance to perform at a basketball half-time. So, that’s a lot of fun. And then, in October, the day before Halloween, we’re going to do like a mini dance clinic that’s just teaching them fun dances like Thriller, Monster Mash.”
“We usually have a pretty good turn-out. It’s so much fun, because they have a real performance opportunity in front of the whole student body and their parents and whoever attends the basketball game.”
That’s Hannah Peers. She says Dance Company includes Sopho- mores through Seniors. She says it’s important to bring their whole company to the national festival because there will be college recruitment opportunities. It’s a festival with a high-level arts conservatory and pre -professional dance high schools attending.
“As a dance company, we don’t do very many competitions. We tend to go to festivals and different convention type of places. But as far as studio dance, as Clara said, we have some dancers who dance separately at studios who compete more for awards and stuff.”
Senior Viv Pinnell has an overview of the kinds of dance performance they will likely see at the festival in Pittsburg. The team has a wide range of abilities. Many come from studio training and have a strong technical background.
“Yeah, so there’s all kinds of schools that are coming. Like schools that focus specifically on ballet and more classical styles of dance. So, there are some schools that are more modern. So, there’s a pretty wide a more modern. So, there’s a pretty wide spread of everything. Hopefully we’ll be able to perform and if we get the opportunity, we’ll do a more modern piece ourselves.”
Park City High School Dance Instructor Ashley Mott says it is an incredible opportunity for students to get exposure to college dance programs, scholarships, the hundreds of classes and workshops in all genres of dance. There will be performance by professional companies in the evenings and then scholarship auditions where students can be evaluated by dozens of schools in just one location.
The National Dance Festival is in February in Pittsburg. The team is working hard to raise funds to bring each of the 14 team members to the event.
