California Dance Institute Event of the Year 2014

California Dance Institute (CDI), an
in-school and after-school arts education program, will present SPACE: One Small Step, a Thousand Giant
Leaps! on Wednesday, May 21st at 7 PM and Thursday, May 22nd
at 4 and 7 PM. Each show will feature 170 children from the 3rd through 8th
grades, in a professionally staged production accompanied by a live,
professional band and vocalists. The performance is the culminating event of
this school year's CDI program, which teaches life and learning skills through
dance and music.  The show explores outer
space through dance numbers set to an array of musical styles, from Richard
Strauss, John Williams, George Gershwin and Charles Ives, to the Beatles, the
Police, Robert Fripp and Philip Glass.

The 7pm Thursday evening performance will be
followed by a Gala Reception at 8:00pm. Tickets to the Gala are $75, which
includes the 7pm show.  All proceeds go
to CDI’s programming.  

The event will be held at CDI’s new home in
the Capshaw-Spielberg Center for Educational Justice at the Herb Alpert Village
in Santa Monica.  Performances are in the
state-of-the-art Ann and Jerry Moss Theater, with the Gala Reception taking
place in the building’s beautiful Leadership Center.

Founder and Artistic Director Carole
Valleskey, formerly a Joffrey Ballet principal dancer, started CDI in 2001.
Today CDI serves over 1400 children in public schools throughout Los Angeles.
CDI is an affiliate of the world-renowned National Dance Institute, founded in
1976 by New York City Ballet’s Jacques d’Amboise. NDI’s phenomenal success has
led to national and international recognition, including the 1995 Kennedy
Center Honors, the MacArthur Genius Award, and the Academy Award-winning film
“He Makes Me Feel Like Dancin’.”  The
program has touched the lives of over one million children throughout the
country and abroad, across all ethnic and economic backgrounds.