This year’s annual showcase of students, ‘Shuswap Dance presents A Night at the Movies,’ will be just that.
In keeping with provincial guidelines regarding the coronavirus, dancers at Carolyn Wonacott’s school have been practising via Zoom, combined with some in-studio dancing pre-COVID and during the past week. That’s led to something completely different for the annual year-end shows.
Come Wednesday, May 27, dance students, friends and families will be heading to the Starlight Drive-In Theatre in Enderby, where they’ll pull in and park to see Shuswap Dance performances on the big screen.
Included will be a lot of Zoom footage collected of local dancers over the past six weeks as well as some numbers from the Christmas show because not everyone was able to participate via Zoom.
Wonacott explains the junior show is called Stories, featuring titles like the Paper Bag Princess and Peter Rabbit.
The older students have been working on Snow White in-studio and via Zoom.
“We did a lot on Zoom,” Wonacott smiled. “We choreographed a whole show on Zoom. That was really exciting.”
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On June 3, a week after A Night at the Movies but still at the drive-in, the annual gala show will take place.
It includes all the competition numbers for 2020.
“We normally go to four competitions a year and of course they were cancelled. So we did a dress rehearsal up at the Nexus theatre where we filmed them,” Wonacott explained.
The gala show will also include a celebration of three students who are graduating from high school as well as from the dance centre – Richelle Zurowski, Heidi Boileau and Josh Williams.
Wonacott spoke about their futures with dance.
Richelle plans to work as a nanny in Italy for a year before travelling to London to do a teacher training program for dance through the Imperial Society of Teachers of Dance.
Heidi plans to go to George Brown College in Toronto to access the professional program for Ballet Jorgen out of Ottawa.
Josh is gradutating from the National Ballet School which he has attended since Grade 9. He plans to dance at the Hamburg Ballet School in Germany.
Regarding the two drive-in shows, Wonacott said the video has been converted to the correct program for the big screen, but the resolution won’t be great – it’s not going to be movie quality. She raves about the Starlight Drive-in and all the help staff have provided to put on the memorable event.
There will be room for 100 cars, maximum four people per car, and specific social distancing rules will be in place.
If you’d like to attend, you can book online through Ticket Seller. Put in Shuswap Dance and the event will come up, Wonacott said.
The great thing about using the drive-in, she points out, is, this year, the students will get to watch themselves.
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