Saturday night may be your last chance to see some of Rossland’s finest dancers before they head to the big city.
Kootenay Danceworks will be having a special show at the Charles Bailey Theatre in Trail entitled “Footprints” which will give the dancers a chance to show their talent as a sort of kick off to the summer.
Renee Salsiccioli who coaches the dancers, said that there are a few dancers who will be leaving the area.
Three of the dancers are graduating, and two are hoping to further their careers in dance, and two others who were accepted to professional schools for the summer.
Those schools are four weeks of auditions to possibly get into the full-time professional programs in the fall.
Michaela Skuce did the four week audition at the Royal Winnipeg Ballet last year.
“She’s 12, but she’s stayed in Winnipeg this year and she’s training there right now,” she said.
As for the name of the show, Salsiccioli said:
“I think that it’s kind of fitting in the sense of the word footprints in that all these people are starting and leaving their footprints in their journeys. That was sort of the idea around it.”
Sally Turnbull, Cydney Streadwick, Anna Cooper and Jill Amantea were chosen as representatives for the Provincial Festival of the Arts being held in Nanaimo.
Salciccioli said that to perform the dancers must do two solos in their field, so if they are doing ballet, they need two solos in ballet.
“It’s the best of B.C. that goes into one big festival,” she explained.
She said that out of the four, Steadwick and Amantea have been trying to go to provincials for a few years. They’ve attended as observers, back up dancers if the primary can’t dance, but never as the main dancers.
“It’s their last year, so it is nice for them,” she said, adding that it’s still up in the air as to where the two will dance next year.
There are also three dancers under twelve who are auditioning for professional programs, though Salsiccioli said it’s usually difficult for parents to allow their children to go off to full-time dance programs at such a young age.
“Though you never know, Michaela Skuce never thought she was going to go for the year and she was 11,” she said. “She ended up loving it so much that she’s gone. It’s great for them, because they need that sort of training.”
While Kathryn Daines has been chosen to attend the Royal Winnipeg Ballet Professional Division Summer School.
Salsiccioli said that in ballet, 11 is the age that schools want the dancers to be.
She added that it’s very exciting for her students.
“It is exciting, especially from this area, there is a lot of arts here, but it’s not a city where you can go to the theatre every night with ballet and the opera, it’s more sports,” she said. “It’s good to have people realize that kids intros area actually have that opportunity.”
Salsiccioli herself thinks of the ballet schools as a sort of home. She left Rossland when she was 14 to study at the Royal Winnipeg Ballet School.
The show is Saturday, May 19 at the Charles Bailey Theatre in Trail starting at 6:30 p.m. Admission is $12.