Join Dancers’ Workshop to showcase the product of months of Junior Company dancers’ hard work and creativity to choreograph their peers into enchanting ensembles– learning important leadership, dance, and creative reasoning skills along the way.
JACKSON, Wyo. — How often do students get a chance to lead their peers in pieces of their own creative expression? (“Not that often!” someone stage-whispers from offscreen.) Luckily, for years, Dancers’ Workshop has sought to afford its students an incredible opportunity for creative growth and a chance to develop leadership and teaching skills in practical application. And the product is a graceful collaboration of imaginative and enticing concepts, dance moves, and unique expression.
The Junior Repertory Company (JRC), dancers from sophomore year of high school up, have the opportunity to choreograph a group of their peers and collaborate with local composers from Teton Music School in a months-long process to create a dance pieces that speaks to them– and hopefully reaches your hearts as well.
Dancers’ Workshop has been serving and educating the Jackson Hole community for fifty years — it’s their Golden Birthday this year! — teaching young students the joy that dance can bring, and rearing them in discipline, expression, and motion. Experienced and passionate Dancers’ Workshop staff members lead students in a smattering of different genres of dance lessons and teach many well-known techniques, producing with well-rounded and knowledgeable students. DW values community, and strives to create a space for everyone to learn and experience the joys of dance.
The JRC is the contracted, pre-professional dance company for upper-level students at Dancers’ Workshop. JRC students have technique classes (ballet and contemporary dance styles) during the week, as well as class and rehearsals every Saturday morning during the school year. During the winter season, rehearsals consist of practice for the winter production put on in early December — this past year it was “If the Shoe Fits,” an original spin on the Cinderella story — but rehearsals during the spring semester are taken up with practice for NDNC, or “New Dances, New Choreographers.” In addition to a piece choreographed by a guest artist starring all of the JRC members, sophomores, juniors, and seniors in high school collaborate with their classmates and instructors to create several unique five-to-six-minute pieces with their peers as the dancers.
Projecting an individual idea or even just a vague expression onto a canvas of ready dancers is hard enough, it would seem, but JRC choreographers also must audition and choose their equals, deciding whom they see as fit for their vision, then they must train them in choreographed material. Most first-year choreographers have never experienced anything quite like this new authority over peers — and it can be overwhelming at times. Through the initial strangeness of leadership, however, students learn to excel in expressing their ideas to others and building their visions vicariously through their friends.
DW and JRC alumnus, Morana Lundquist, says that “NDNC prepared me to manage large complex projects/problems, work collaboratively with people of various backgrounds, and communicate my ideas clearly and confidently. I have used these skills in college, work experience, and my personal life.”
Another alumnus, Ashlyn Fadala, says, “I find the NDNC process to be freeing in a way. As an alumnus, during my time I found it to be connecting in more ways than one. It’s a mastery of communication. To be able to say what you want in your choreography, and then to find a way to communicate that to your dancers. The last NDNC show I performed in with my fellow company members there was an air of respect for the performances done by these artists. I enjoy NDNC as a dancer and now as a spectator because of the open interpretation of the pieces presented. No one can take that away from you.”
Dancers explore new styles, movements, and patterns as they learn other peoples’ choreography and create their own. This newfound freedom of form can help shape dancers or solidify them in their confidence about their own styles. Overall, NDNC is an enchanting and enriching process for dancers and choreographers alike.
The dancers have performed for many audiences over time– and loved it. New Dances, New Choreographers is an enlightening opportunity for the community to see the progress and time spent through the dancing sessions. Since the performance is in the middle of the year, it is a great representation of growth. The 22nd-23rd of April at 6PM. The best way to get a ticket is to purchase through The Center for teh Arts. As the Dancers’ Workshop is part of the Center for the Arts, the performance will be held in the theater. If you are planning to attend, encourage others to join you and see it for themselves. It is very important we show our community the dances we work on, and we can’t wait to see many people in the audience.
Dancers’ Workshop is also happy to announce that this event will be presented in a hybrid format for those who are unable to join us in person. In-person tickets are $12 for students, $22 for adults, and $10 for virtual access on April 22 and April 23 at 6pm.
