Dancers Soar, Imaginations Run Wild at Season Finale Performance

Dancers soared and imaginations ran wild this past Saturday at the season finale peformance of the Restoration Dance Theatre's Youth Arts Academy.

The end-of-the-year peformance took place at the Walt Whitman Auditorium at Brooklyn College. The theme of the evening was "imagination," an idea that Youth Arts Academy Program Manager Sabine Lafortune wants to instill in the young dancers.

"It's all about their imagination," she said. "If they imagine it, it can happen." 

John Lennon's song "Imagine" bookended the program in various renditions, starting and ending the show on a hopeful note.

"The message in the song is important," Youth Arts Academy Director Peggy Alston said.

"There was a dance called 'Freedom' performed by the younger children and it was dedicated to Nelson Mandela. We didn't expect them to know exactly what that means, but the message was 'imagine no more apartheid, imagine that all things are possible.' That's a good message for the children." 

The night featured three hours of dancing from all styles and all ages. After a performance from African drummers and a dance choreographed to the live music, a group of about fifteen students in the beginner ballet class performed a piece set to Randy Crawford's rendition of "Imagine." 

The African drummers returned periodically throughout the night to showcase their skills and play for the West African dance students, who performed lively pieces in colorful costumes. Five-, six- and seven-year-olds danced a ballet piece entitled, 'Dolls that dance when no one is looking,' dressed in Queen of Hearts dresses and dancing like miniature dolls. 

After the intermission, the youngest students of the performance got the loudest cheer of the night as proud parents watched them dance on the stage with their instructors, the three- and four-year-olds performing the piece "Freedom." The following group of beginner ballet students performed a short scene from the Nutcracker in blue-sequined outfits and tutus.  

The familiar Tchaikovsky tune abruptly skipped a beat and the young dancers were then using the tutus as pom-poms and dancing to Justin Beiber's 'Baby,' providing an adequate segue to the following tap dance performance. The piece was so popular that it required an encore performance later in the show, which received the second biggest cheer of the night.  

The advanced ballet students went a similar route as the beginner students, going from Swan Lake to Soul Train, beginning their performance with the iconic Russian ballet and switching hastily in the middle to The Sound of Philadelphia by MFSB (Mother, Father, Sister, Brother).

Various contemporary dances were performed, including contemporary ballet pieces that incorporated hand games, as well as modern dance pieces utilizing the Horton technique. Five different classes of hip hop students performed unique pieces, each to a mash-up of popular songs. 

"The program represents all styles of dance and we spotlighted a number of things in the show," Alston said. 

"Most kids tend to be shy and the arts, not just dance, help them come out of their shell," Lafortune said of the program. "It breaks them out of their shyness and is even helpful with discipline. A lot of parents will tell their kids that if they don't do their schoolwork, they can't go to dance class, so they get it done." 

Alston noted that the program emphasizes using dance as a tool for academic, artistic and personal development. "Those three things are key," she said. Lafortune pointed out that the program also helps students who are interested in becoming choreographers by giving them the opportunity to choreograph some of the hip hop pieces that were performed on Saturday. "They get to see it come to life."

"One thing we're very proud of in the program is retention," Alston added, smiling as she greeted and pointed out a number of the program's alumni backstage who had returned to help out and show support. 

One such alum was Jasmine Poole, who started in the program when she was about 8. Now in her twenties, she returns to Restoration to teach. Although her passion lies in African dance, she helps clean up the choreography in ballet, hip hop, modern dance and other styles for the program. 

Poole has danced with various schools in her career, but she feels a special bond with Restoration because it gives her a sense of home, she said.

"They gave me the courage and the confidence to grow as a person, and they helped me 'imagine,'" she noted. "I'm not a very talkative person so dance is a way for me to express the way I feel without expressing it verbally. We do collaborations with dancers from all over the world, and we can still communicate, because dance is its own universal language."