This is my first time being a dancer and I was blown away because everyone has like their own style, own genre and it's amazing to see everything on stage.
Working with so many dancers and getting to know other people, it helps like build a confidence to go audition for other pieces
because you get to learn things that you would have never learned before and you're like, oh I'm kind of good at that, let me go take a class, you know.
It's interesting to see so many different people from so many different walks of life coming together on the same stage because it's like there are people here that are trying to make dance their professional career and then there are others who are just here to have fun because they love dancing.
I've wanted to be a dancer since I was about four so I've always wanted to do it so I think my favorite part is just sort of having that energy and just being able to interact with the audience.
My name is Joey McNeely, I've been directing, choreographing West Side Story all over the world for about the past 13 years and I'm basically in charge of representing the drum robins' choreography and making sure that the integrity of the choreography remains and I've been asked to keep presenting it to a new generation.
And it really wasn't until I did West Side Story that I experienced what it meant to do Broadway choreography and what it felt like to be an actor. I was never asked to do that before so it really changed my perspective of choreography and actually inspired me to become a choreographer myself because I've been a Broadway choreographer also.
My energy, I'm sending my energy up.
You know, dancing to me is the vocabulary of my body and I think it's very important to bring it up more art around us and how incredible it is. All these kids, hours and hours of waking is amazing so I think this is a very enriched cultural development in terms of dance.
You know, I think people should do this more.
I think what I've enjoyed most about working with Dora is just seeing how cultural identity can flow into three such different pieces like we have the Orisha, we have the dancers and then we have like the jumpers and the flippers and the capoeira and just seeing how it's all one cultural identity but it still has all three pieces and that was really cool.
This particular group started in 2006 and it's comprised of family members, immediate and extended family and people that started out taking dance lessons from us and then it sort of grew from there.
The piece actually that was chosen by Nanabe was the piece that was done by the Grand Ballet and it's very intricate. The instruments that we use are traditional carved out log and skins.
The choreography for this dance, it's like a lot of muscle control and being able to isolate each muscle because it really is just from the ribcage down that moves.
We formed about 1993, just started out as a senior project as an after school club and then for the past 10 years we had turned it around to be a competing group and so we auditioned kids to be on the team and a lot of the dancers that we take have little to no dance experience and so we train them at the end of the year with culminates to a state or national competition that we do.
I had a fun time watching them do African and Tahitian and all the different styles so it's great to see them kind of out of their shell as well to experience that.
It's unique because in competitions it's more serious and you have specific facial that you can do but performing here we get to interact with the audience and that's what's fun and it's also unique because we get to learn new styles.
My name is Savina Smith-Worland, I'm 17 and I'm from Orcas Island, Washington. My piece was chosen to be the Young Choreographer's piece in the show. For the past few months I auditioned dancers and I've been teaching them my piece and through that learning even more ways to communicate what I've done so not only do you learn how to access the more creative side of yourself but how to communicate what you've just made up to your dancers.
I am Joe Bowie and I've been a member of the Mark Horst Dance Group for the past 21 years and I've been here staging one of Mark's pieces, Polka, for a dances.
Polka is the fourth movement of a larger piece called Grand duo and it's composed by an American composer named Lou Harrison. It's very ritualistic, it's a circle dance and there's sort of no ends and no beginnings in it.
For the Mark Morris piece we had two weeks to rehearse and we have a show and that's something I've never done before so I think that's really an exciting thing. So it takes endurance and cardiovascular strength and it's very mathematical.
My name is LaTuan, I'm now 20 and in dances I'm doing the tap piece and I'm in West Side Story.
We started with a tribute to James Brown and from there I wanted to do a solo and so I was able to work on it and bring it up to par with Miss Melba and from there I was able to graduate from that to do a new here and dance this.
This piece, it was a collaboration between me and Daniel Cruz. His first part was the old York, the fussy, fancy and mine was the New York, the busy, cool and sexy piece.
We wanted to see a contrast between the two pieces so I felt like I wanted to be busy and there's like a lot of walking transitions.
Working with Daniel Cruz and Jong Jong is great, they both know exactly what they want and they're both experienced choreographers and dancers so they get it from both points of view so they understand their dancers.
Even though we're all so different but we're all still trying to do each other stuff and it's just, it's cool, it's a nice bonding experience with people that you never thought you would meet.
And really learning to collaborate and work together, challenges always seem daunting but once you break them down and you have people around you to help you through them, they seem so easy in the end and you feel so much better for overcoming them.
There's nothing more than loving who you are, she said, cause you made you perfect babe.
So hold your head up girl and you'll go far, there's nothing better than the same.
I got a little bit too much, all of the people stop to rush, a busy twisted dance came from a drink of man, with all my cheese I lost my phone.
What's wrong in all of the flow, I love this record baby but I can't see straight anymore, keep it cool with the name of love.
I can't remember cause it's alright, alright, just dance, go be okay, dada dada dada dada dada dance.
