Summer Dance Intensive Registration Now Open

CANTERBURY, NH - Canterbury Shaker Village, a National Historic Landmark and museum dedicated to preserving and rethinking the Shakers’ 200-year legacy, will be hosting a six-day Summer Dance Intensive June 22, to June 24 and June 27, to June 29, 2016, according to a press statement.

Registration for the program is for pre-professional dancers ages 15 and up is now open. Participants who sign up before March 6, will receive a discount. The Summer Dance Intensive is one part of the recently announced Shaker Dance Revival Project - a new strategic program that honors the Shakers’ use of dance in worship while rethinking these traditions for contemporary audiences and dancers.

The Summer Dance Intensive is designed to provide “rigorous training from high caliber dance instructors in a range of disciplines, including ballet and a variety of contemporary dance techniques and modern modalities, while also providing an opportunity to learn about and connect with the Shaker legacy.” Dancers can choose to sign up for three or six days. The cost to attend is $200 for one session or $400 for the full six days. Village members and those participants who register for both sessions by March 6, will receive an additional discount.

Instructors include resident Dance Maker Lorraine Chapman and Dance Revivalist Joan Talarico-Brodsky. The Summer Dance Intensive features Diane Arvanites, founder and co-artistic director of Prometheus Dance, which has been named “One of the Ten Best in Dance” five times by prominent Boston news organizations; Sydney Skybetter, internationally known choreographer and consultant whose dances are regularly performed around the country, most recently at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Boston Center for the Arts, Jacob’s Pillow and the Joyce Theater; Amanda Whitworth, director of Dance at Plymouth State University and co-founder and president of the New Hampshire Dance Alliance; and Edra Toth, former Prima Ballerina with the Boston Ballet and member of New Hampshire’s Governor’s Council on the Arts.

The Shaker Dance Revival Project will also include signature dance performances on Aug. 5, and Aug. 6, as part of Village Rising.

For more information about this new strategic program or to register for the Summer Dance Intensive, visit shakers.org/dancerevivalproject

Caption: Photo of LCTC dancer Lucy Warren-Whitman. Credit: Steve Wollkind.