Deale Dancers to Perform at Cherry Blossom Festival

The County Dance Conservatory in Deale has been chosen to perform in the National Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington D.C. The festival  runs this year from March 25 through April 10. The performance by the County Dance Conservatory will be at 2 p.m. on March 29 at the Sylvan Theater, on the Washington Monument Grounds.

This is the first year that the Deale company auditioned for the festival.

“They said don’t expect to get in your first try, but we did,” said the director of the school, J. Davis Hobdy.

But this isn’t their first time on a big stage. Since the dance studio opened in 2002, they have been invited to New Prague Dance Festival in the Czech Republic eight times, Hobdy said. They have won numerous individual and team awards.

Last year, the company's dancers performed in Paris at the European Festival of Dance and Performing Arts. At that festival, they walked away with a first place award for a dance to Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind." At this year's Cherry Blossom festival, the dancers will again open with a piece choreographed to the same song.

Some of their more local venues the company has performed at include Marlborough Day in Upper Marlboro, the Chesapeake Pride Festival in Edgewater, the South County Relay for Life at South River High School and the Anne Arundel County Fair in Crownsville.

Hobdy said that he plans on having 12 different dances for the Cherry Blossom show, including modern, ballet, jazz and tap.

The company will premiere a new tap-dance piece to "Ain’t Misbehavin’," which they will perform in Prague this summer.

They will end with a piece that the Conservatory is known for, "Flying the Flag," by Scooch which celebrates cultural diversity. The dance takes place on an airplane with dancers as passengers and flight attendants. At the end of the dance they all wave flags from different countries.

Diversity is a theme for the Conservatory. Along with their different awards, they hang a flag for every country and state they have performed in. They plan on adding a Washington D.C. flag to their collection.

The diversity also shows in their dancers. They will have 18 dancers performing 12 different dances Hobdy said. Their ages range from seven to 74 years old.

The show is free and open to the public.

The annual Cherry Blossom Festival commemorates the 1912 gift of 3,000 cherry trees to the city of Washington from then-Tokyo mayor Yukio Ozaki. Residents of the city and citizens from around the world visit the Tidal Basin area each spring to see the explosion of pink blossoms. The trees in this area are the same trees—or  descendents—of the original trees delivered to the city 99 years ago.

Currently, the peak bloom forecast is Marc 29-April 3. Check the Bloom Watch website for updates.