Dance Peninsula Ballet cancels season
Dance Peninsula Ballet has made the difficult decision to cancel the 2013-2014 Season due to declining company membership levels. Our program is funded by the tuition of company members and is not possible without the volunteer efforts of member parents and community members to fund raise and assist with all production needs. Other than our professional artistic staff, our ballet company is a volunteer organization. Without sufficient membership, we simply cannot provide the community with our current program. The Artistic Director and The Board of Directors for Dance Peninsula Ballet, a non profit, 501(c)(3) organization, have decided to use the upcoming year to research possible alternative programming that could allow for high level training for ballet students while working to reduce some of the costs and volunteer commitments required under the current program. The Dance Peninsula Board believes we have offered our members the very best ballet education under the direction of ballet master, Roberto Almaguer, and it would be our hope that we are able to keep this talented artistic leader in our community. Everyone involved at Dance Peninsula thanks the families of past and present company members, the families of PSPA students and the Palos Verdes community for their generous support over the years. We are pleased to be able to support Tita Boulger and PSPA as the school organizes their own version of the Nutcracker for their students by making available many of Dance Peninsula’s costumes and props. The Nutcracker is a global Holiday Tradition and we have been honored to present our version over the past quarter century and we hope all the dancers that have been involved have beautiful memories and a lifelong appreciation for the art of ballet.
PSPA responds to cancellation
We at PSPA are so sorry to about the decision of DPB to forgo their 2013-2014 season. We have felt Artistic Director Roberto Almaguer has created a truly top quality program for our small school and the Palos Verdes community. This year every one of our company members was accepted to the top national and internationals summer ballet programs including ABT New York, ABT Irvine, Alonzo Kings Lines, San Francisco Ballet, The Rock, SAB, and The Royal Ballet School in London. There has been truly phenomenal growth in our dancers in the last four years. We are honored that Mr. Roberto, as we call him, will continue to teach for us on Thursdays in the fall. We wish him the best from all of us at PSPA as he leaves for New York to teach in the Kaatsbaan summer program.
As a supporter of Dance Peninsula Ballet since it’s inception in 1988, I urge the community to show their support of this longstanding community arts organization. Through the work of DPB we have trained hundreds of dancers who now carry on careers as dancers, dance teachers, company directors and arts supporters, many beginning with scholarship help. We have shared our stage and opened our hearts to many guest dancers and companies through our We All Dance productions. We have invited thousands of outreach guests to our productions at no cost. And we have provided the highest quality productions for tens of thousands of theatergoers and balletomanes, you the ballet audience, at prices that allow all to attend. We hope you will continue to support DPB in this year of rebuilding so they will come back next season stronger than ever. A new generation of dancers are waiting for the opportunity.
Nutcracker to continue in 2013
Peninsula School of Performing Arts is excited to be able to produce the 2013 production of The Nutcracker. The performances will be held November 22, 23 & 24 at the Norris Theater. Auditions will be held on Saturday, September 7th at the Lunada Bay location of PSPA. Auditions will be as follows:
Ginger Snaps (ages 5-7) 9am
Mice, Soldiers & Clowns (ages 7-10) 10am
Party Scene Boys & Girls and Chinese (ages 10-12) 11am
All Junior roles including Clara, Fritz, Rabbits, Junior Snow, Junior Waltz, and Russian. Some roles will be cast on pointe (ages 10-14) 12-2pm.
All Senior Roles including Dolls, Senior Snow, Senior Waltz, Spanish, Merlitons, Arabian, Snow Queen, and Dew Drop Fairy. Be prepared to audition on pointe (ages 12-adult) 2-4pm.
Fees and requirements for participation:
Participation or Workshop fee will be $250 per person. If cast in a second role the fee will be $300, 3 or more roles $350. Fee includes rehearsal and coaching times, costumes, professional photo shoot and a business card size ad in the program.
All parents are required to sign up for 5, or more, hours of volunteer time in one or more of the following areas:
Auditions, costumes and props, photo shoot, backstage help or boutique.
Ballet class requirements are as follows:
Ginger snaps 1 ballet class per week in addition to rehearsal times.
Mice, Soldiers, Clowns 2 ballet classes per week.
All other parts 3 ballet classes minimum per week.