Photos courtesy of Eduardo Patino and the Pennsylvania Regional Ballet
Attending a live performance of “The Nutcracker” is a holiday tradition for many people, whether it’s by a major ballet company or a local dance school.
The Pennsylvania Regional Ballet’s annual staging of the Christmas classic includes a unique feature. In addition to offering performances for the public, the dance company offers free performances for local school districts to introduce students to ballet and the theater experience.
The school began hosting the educational performances in 2002, offering free tickets to students in the Harrisburg School District and providing low-cost tickets to students at other public, private and charter schools in the region.
“We do our best to invite all schools in south-central Pennsylvania, but our particular emphasis is ensuring tickets to the Harrisburg School District so that their students can come at no cost,” said Denise Brinley, president of the ballet school’s board of directors. “We’re trying to cultivate the experience of ballet for all children. It’s very inspiring to see it all come together.”
The goal is to bring ballet and the arts to communities that might not have the opportunity to see ballet, stated Victoria Silva, the school’s co-artistic director and a former student.
“That’s an important part of our mission—to expose children to the arts and open doors to them,” she said.
The educational performances include live narration, which Brinley said is especially helpful for children who don’t know “The Nutcracker” storyline. The school faculty refreshes the choreography for the performances each year, allowing them to highlight the unique skills within the student body.
“Students all have the opportunity to perform, and we can be much more inclusive in this version,” Brinley said.
The children, Silva added, get very excited.
“The chaperones are sometimes surprised by their behavior, because the kids are entranced for two hours,” she said. “There is a lot of real reaction in the audience, and the students thrive off of that. They feel they’ve given something back to the kids in the seats.”
Classes that attend the educational performances receive supplemental materials to use in their classrooms, including information on theater etiquette, basic dance poses, the history of “The Nutcracker” and related games and activities.
“It prepares them for what the theater experience is going to be like and what they are going to see on stage,” Silva said.
Brinley said that some schools come every year.
“It’s part of their curriculum,” she said. “It’s a really wonderful way to kick off the holiday season.”
Rigorous Program
The Pennsylvania Regional Ballet was established in 1988 as Cumberland Dance Company. The school moved to its current location in Enola under Artistic Director Sandra Carlino during the 2003-04 season and adopted its current name the following year.
The school currently enrolls about 100 students ages 3 to 18. Unlike some other dance schools, the Pennsylvania Regional Ballet has no audition process, fostering an inclusive environment for all students.
“We believe everybody can be a dancer,” Silva said.
Erin Stiefel-Inch, the school’s co-artistic director, was a professional ballerina herself and wanted to enroll her daughter in a quality dance program when she was young.
“I could see the care the teachers took with the students,” she said. “The education that they get is top-notch. No matter what the aspirations are, the school shapes the individual.”
Stiefel-Inch’s daughter is now a professional dancer in New York. Other students do not pursue dancing professionally, but take the lessons learned at the school and apply them to other areas of their lives. Brinley’s daughter danced with the school for 13 years, and she said she can see how that shaped her daughter’s experience.
“It is a rigorous program, and what they put into it, they get out of it,” she said. “They learn discipline, respect and care, and make friends and bonds that will last a lifetime. I feel my daughter’s engagement here shaped who she is and who she will become.”
The school offers scholarships for students in need and free instruction for boys and young men to encourage more males to explore dance.
“Having access to the arts is a really special thing for communities,” Brinley said. “These are things that lift us up and bring us happiness.”
The Pennsylvania Regional Ballet will perform “The Nutcracker” for the public at The Theatre at the Scottish Rite in Harrisburg Dec. 6 and 7. More information and tickets are available at www.prballet.org.
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