As an educator and the founding director of Francisco Gella Dance Works, Francisco Gella has nearly 30 years of experience teaching at colleges, conservatories, studios, competitions, and conventions. Now, he is combining the best aspects of all these diverse environments in ROOTS Dance Summit. “I created ROOTS Dance Summit as a hybrid of sorts,” says […]
It’s no surprise that more and more dancers are choosing to choreograph their own solos for competitions: It grants them creative freedom, gives them a chance to practice choreography, and allows them to find what movement works best for them. But what about dancers who want to choreograph a duet, trio or even a group […]
What happens when a feel-good dance competition is faced with the challenges of a pandemic? It pivots (pun-intended) and finds another way for dancers to keep doing what they love safely. For National Dance Showcase, that meant trading the traditional touring model and creating its own home base—NDS HQ—in Voorhees, NJ. “We are truly in […]
Revive Dance Competition and Convention is returning for its sixth (and largest!) season yet with their “Discover the Difference” national tour. What started as an offshoot of Adrenaline Dance has firmly established itself as a unique dance competition/convention experience for dancers to grow as artists. Revive’s mission is to connect up-and-coming teachers with the next […]
Your heart is racing, your adrenaline is pumping, and your friend is zipping up your costume while cheering you on. It must be a quick-change! From shoes to hairpieces to makeup, costume changes between dances have a lot of moving pieces. Luckily, Dance Spirit talked to two quick-change experts—Zoe Lemelman, an incoming Pace University Commercial […]
The world is slowly opening back up. And if we can be honest, none of us will miss our sweaty masks sticking to our faces. Wearing a mask while dancing is nobody’s favorite thing. But there’s another downside to masks that dancers must now grapple with: a year and a half now spent practicing performance […]
The world of competition and convention dance has always had its share of supporters and naysayers, folks who laud the circuit for providing up-and-coming dancers opportunities to perform, and others who argue that the comp/con world encourages tricks and acrobatics above artistry. But amidst these important conversations, one question rarely gets its due coverage: Are […]
As pandemic-related safety restrictions ease and dancers return to competition and convention stages, many dancers will face new obstacles, mainly, performing in masks and performing all your routines at once. While you’ve probably trained and rehearsed in a mask, performing onstage in one—in front of judges and an audience, and with all that performance-induced adrenaline—will […]