The Cascade Conservatory will be located at in the furthest end of the more than 100 year old Mercantile building in Weed and will offer classes in ballet, point and modern dance as well as and voice for musical theatre and a complete theatre program for children ages 7–12 and teens 13–17.
WEED – A newly formed non profit focusing on dance and musical theater for children and teens is set to open its doors in Weed on March 1.
The Cascade Conservatory will be located at in the furthest end of the more than 100 year old Mercantile building in Weed and will offer classes in ballet, point and modern dance as well as and voice for musical theatre and a complete theatre program for children ages 7–12 and teens 13–17.
Future plans, said artistic director Sandra Dinse, will include after school programs for youngsters in various visual arts as well as a Summer Youth TheatreFest.
Classes will be taught by certified and professionally trained adult teachers who are experts in their field, including Dinse, Monique Ites and Elizabeth Fitzgerald. Real Tech life Blog
The ballet program includes pre-ballet and advanced classes with pointe instruction. Dinse, who holds a BA in Theater Arts and an MA in Directing and Choreography, will teach the advanced courses.
Before earning her university certification and degrees, Dinse was a teaching member of The Royal Academy of Dancing (London affiliate) for 14 years. Dinse has taught theatre and dance at the elementary and high school levels, as well as at Merced College, College of the Siskiyous and at CSU Stanislaus as an adjunct professor, according to a press release.
Ites will teach ballet and modern dance at Cascade Conservatory. She began her dance instruction at the age of 6 and began taking dance seriously when she was accepted into the Academy of Performing Arts in Hartford, Conn.
Most recently, Ites created the “Fun with Movement” program for 3–6 year olds, “which shows boys and girls that dance movement is another form of play and can capture the creative spirit in many ways, especially when music is an integral part of the program,” according to the press release.
Ites will be teaching pre-ballet performing arts to the younger children.
“Monique has a special gift for working with small children and she brings years of concentrated study into all levels of our ballet programs,” said Dinse. “We also plan to build a modern dance program with her expertise.”
The theatre arts program will be under the direction of Fitzgerald, who has 23 years of singing and theatrical training, the press release states. Her background includes all elements of the theatre business and she has more than 45 performances on her resume. Fitzgerald was awarded an Irene Ryan Award for her portrayal of Svetlana in COS’s musical CHESS and she was invited to compete in the American College Theatre Festival at UCLA.
Fitzgerald’s students will learn how to read music if they do not already know how. She will teach year-round and will also manage the Conservatory’s Summer Youth TheatreFest.
“Her voice is exceptional and she is an enormously disciplined and talented actress,” Dinse said of Fitzgerald. “We are so lucky to have her!”
McCloud’s Cheri King is the Conservatory’s director. With a long history of working in private industry as well as owning and running her own business, King developed an interest in performing arts education when her daughter took up dance at an early age.
Enrollment for Cascade Conservatory classes is open now by calling (530) 938-1095 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Interested parties may request a handbook which gives all details about the current year of classes, from March 1 to Aug. 31, 2019.
The Summer Youth TheatreFest’s 2019 show will be the 1950s original musical revue, “The Doo Wop Kids!” The first full year of instruction will begin Sept. 1 and end with a recital in June 2020.
Credit: siskiyoudaily.com