From: Kate Lowe: Halton District School Board held its TENTH annual dance festival, “Florescence – Celebrating International Dance Day” on April 22nd at the beautiful Queen Elizabeth Park Community and Cultural Centre in Oakville. Our day began with a keynote address delivered by Colleen Golightly, Vice Principal, Tiger Jeet Singh Elelmentary School. Colleen’s words were truly inspiring! Next students participated in two technique workshops taught by area clinicians: Georgia Simms and Adam Bowman (Modern), Matt Willis (Hiphop), Jessica Westermann (Rhythm and Tap), Valerie and Roger Scannura (Flamenco), Leslie Gray (Music Theatre), Lisa Emmons (Contemporary), Heather Lewis (Tribal/Caribbean/Drumming) and Kamal Samra (Bollywood/Bhangra). We ended the morning with a show and share session. With the addition of live accompaniment from three dance styles, “the joint was really rocking!”
In the afternoon, the HDSB teachers took over running creative workshops according to the Ontario Dance Curriculum. Since April 22nd is Earth Day and also the festival’s tenth anniversary we decided to return to our original theme of the four elements: earth, wind, water and fire. Each group was assigned a different prop (beach balls, ribboned dowels, sheer blue sheets, red/yellow/orange squares), the same music and a quote from Chief Seattle. The culminating theatre in the round performance was quite moving and thought provoking. At the end of the day participating schools received a packet of butterfly garden seeds to scatter in their school grounds.
These two hundred fifty students and their teachers left on April 22nd (paraphrasing Chief Seattle) by “Taking only memories, leaving only footprints – rather danceprints!”
