May 3, 2024 – Students in the Dance Theatre of Santa Fe will present the student-choreographed audience favorite “Room to Dance” at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, June 7 and 8, 2024, in the Jackson N. Sasser Fine Arts Hall at the Northwest Campus of Santa Fe College (SF), 3000 NW 83 Street, Gainesville. A question-and-answer “talkback” between the audience and the student choreographers will follow each performance.
Tickets are $15 for adults; $9 for seniors, students, military service members and children 12 and under; and free for SF students, faculty, and staff with college ID cards. Tickets are available from the Fine Arts Hall box office at 352-395-4181 or online from Showpass at: showpass.com/room-to-dance-3.
“Most of these students have honed their skills over their two years in our Dance Program, and ‘Room to Dance’ is their chance to showcase what they’ve learned,” explained SF Assistant Professor of Dance and Dance Theatre of Santa Fe Director Melissa Brenner. “This is a lively, energetic, fun show that audiences always enjoy.”
Students in the Dance Program typically start with technique classes in the different dance styles taught in the department—contemporary modern, ballet, hip hop, West African, jazz and musical theatre dance. Throughout their two years in the program, the students rehearse, perform on the Fine Arts Hall stage, and learn not only from Dance Program faculty members but also from visiting Master Artists and guest choreographers. Toward the end of the program, students take a course in Dance Composition that helps them refine what they have learned about choreography, the term for creating a dance.
“For ‘Room to Dance,’ the students do it all and I can really see their personalities in what they are creating,” Brenner said. “They pull together everything they’ve learned to move into leadership roles. They develop concepts for their dances; hold auditions and cast the dancers; participate in an adjudication process that chooses the dances to be performed; run rehearsals; attend production meetings; manage budgets for costumes, sets and props; work with the lighting designer and stage manager; and talk about their process with the audience at the end of the production. They need all those skills in their dance careers and many of those skills can transfer into other careers too.”
Of the 10 Dance Program graduates this year, Brenner said all are either going on to higher education in dance or entering dance as a professional career.
“Room to Dance” is sponsored and organized by the Santa Fe College Fine Arts and Entertainment Technology Department.
For more information about “Room to Dance” or the SF Dance Program, call Brenner at 352-395-4194. For more information about tickets, call the SF Box Office at 352-395-4181.