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Last updated: November 03. 2006 4:37PM
Dance fever
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Forget what you’ve been told about dance. (You know, that it’s just for kids.) In the Cape Fear region, options for adult dance have ballooned, the product of the community’s population growth and concert venues and arts organizations attracting more professional dance groups for regular performances. In Wilmington, dance has arrived.
Groups come here from all over the state, nation and world – New York City’s Ailey II dancers appeared in January at Kenan Auditorium at UNCW; Chicago’s Hubbard Street Dance Company made an appearance in March; the renowned Chuck Davis African American Dance Ensemble from Durham has visited; the Moscow Ballet will perform The Great Russion Nutcracker Nov. 27-29 at Kenan Auditorium; and the Carolina Ballet will make UNCW its summer home in 2007.
Wilmington also is one of six host cities for the N.C. Dance Festival, which will bring in modern and contemporary dance choreographers from across the state for performances Feb. 23-25.
Today, the tri-county area boasts about 30 dance studios, many of which are offering more selections for adults in modern, hip hop, African, ballet and group dancing such as ballroom, contra dancing and shag. And with such a burst locally, UNCW is hoping to bring in more experimental dance groups for performances at Kenan, Trask and other venues at the school.
“Since there is a growing dance audience here, I can maybe take a few more risks in what we’re presenting,” in modern dance, said Shannon Hooker, who books the school’s Arts in Action series.
* Ballet *
As a young ballet dancer in Wilmington 25 years ago, Elizabeth Hester made a promise. She wanted to open a dance school that would offer increased ballet classes for both children and adults.
Back then, “the most you could take (in classical ballet) was two ballet classes and a pointe class once a week,” said Hester, now director of Wilmington School of Ballet, which offers three dance classes for adults. “I definitely think the growth has changed the environment that supports the arts here. We find that parents of children who come here from metropolitan areas already understand classical study.”
Because more trained dancers are moving here, the dance climate has diversified – and improved.
Gregg Saulnier moved here from Cincinnati four months ago. The former director of the Otto M. Budig Academy of the Cincinnati Ballet jumped into the local dance community and is directing Wilmington School of Ballet’s performance of Cinderella Nov. 17-18. “I see the dance scene growing here,” Saulnier said. “Of course, it’s got a ways to go.”
Part of what’s holding it back is the nature of adult lives, says Kathy Berting, ballet instructor at Danceworks Dance Studio. Adults are busy with work, parenting and other activities unique to a warm beach climate. Finding time for an hour at the gym becomes a juggling act. A scheduled dance class falls lower on the wish list. Right now, she has a sprinkling of adults in her classes.
“They’re there because they want to do it. It’s an aerobic exercise for them,” Berting says. But more importantly, “as adults, you rarely get to have a physical outlet for what’s inside of you. That’s special.” Sljaka, a Brunswick Community College instructor, has been taking ballet lessons two to three times a week for exercise since 1974. She started out with longtime dance teachers Anne Goodrum and Dorothy Nesbitt at the Community Arts Center in Wilmington. Now she takes lessons at Danceworks on Oleander Drive.
“I think it’s important when people get older to do something you like,” she says. “All you have to do is put on a leotard and look at yourself in a mirror to keep you from eating that last piece of chocolate cake.”
* MODERN DANCE *
Wilmington dancer Amy Pierce was steeped in ballet training. That was until she took a creative movement class at the N.C. School of the Arts. “I remember feeling ecstatic,” she says of that first experience with modern dance. “It was being able to expand my whole body rather than keeping my body rigid and controlled and precise like in ballet.”
Pierce hasn’t looked back, and this year, will be one of eight featured choreographers in the N.C. Dance Festival.
Finding modern dance in the Port City a decade ago was much harder. “Adults could take dance, but they had to take classes with teenagers,” said modern dance instructor Suzanne Palmer, a founder of The Dance Cooperative.
In 10 years, the change has been enormous. Modern dance instructor Tracey Varga says the type of dance appeals to adults because “it’s not as specifically defined as classical dances. It gives you more ways to show your emotions. It opened up a whole new freedom of movement for me. To let your weight go down and your torso move.”
Wilmington has contemporary dance schools such as The Dance Cooperative; modern dance organizations such as Forward Motion Dance; and performances such as Dance-a-lorus and Arts Sensation, which allow adult dancers the rare opportunity to perform. Celebrate the Arts, a local arts festival, has added more modern dance performances. And Cameron Art Museum occasionally hosts dance lecture demonstrations.
Because the Dance Cooperative saw such an increased interest in its programs, especially in creative movement, hip hop and modern, in September, it moved from Market Street to 118 S. 17th St.
Palmer said a strong theater presence also has contributed to an infusion of more talented dancers coming to local schools. “The big musicals like Cats with Thalian Association encourage people to get that broad experience with dance.”
* AFRICAN DANCE *
“African dance is one of the few dances that requires both focus and an ability to be free or let go,” says local dancer Shea-Ra Nichi. “That focus of energy, where you’re not allowing your body to be stiff, allows for an inner transformation.”
In African dance, the body is not considered one unit but is separated into several centers of movement and is closely connected to the rhythms of African music. During the African American Dance Ensemble Residency Project 2001-2004, the Wilmington community and several other cities around the state embraced African dance, drumming, visual arts and storytelling workshops that brought white and black communities together under an arts umbrella.
In 2004, Wilmington’s residency culminated in The Gelede Spectacles, a community festival at Airlie Gardens in which hundreds of local dancers, drummers and performers came together to present what they’d learned.
Suzanne Palmer of the Dance Cooperative was one who wanted to keep learning the dance after the residency project ended. So she and African dance instructor Cheick Sissoko started Warabasanou, which meets each Saturday at the Wilmington School of Ballet.
The group is passionate about keeping the bonds formed through dance during the festival strong, Palmer said. And the only way to do that was to just keep dancing. For Nichi, the goal is to educate Wilmington about the origins of African dance. Her company and the African and Cultural Dance Ensemble lead 15-25 drum and dance performances a year at area schools and organizations. She hopes to open an African dance and cultural school here eventually.
“I thought Gelede was really good in terms of an introduction to African dance,” Nichi said, “but how it will change the most is through education and knowledge and understanding of the form rather than just flailing your arms around.”
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