By Guest Blogger Anne Morris, Co-Executive Director at Dance Project

At Dance Project: The School at City Arts, summer is the perfect time to GET CREATIVE! Try something new, dive deeper into a special interest, and most of all, have fun with your friends!

The Greensboro Cultural Center in downtown Greensboro is the place to be to continue your dance training or try something new and artsy this 2017 summer. We run an 8-week (June 19-August 19) summer session of classes for kids, teens, and adults, with offerings like Creative Movement, Ballet, Modern, Jazz, Hip Hop, Tap, and more! We also have a summer full of week-long camps for kids of all ages.

This year, we’re continuing our collaborative “Do a Play All the Way” camps with the Drama Center and the Center for Visual Artists with the fantastical, wacky “Seussical: The Musical” (July 10-14) and the classic fairy tale “Sleeping Beauty” (July 17-21). Campers (ages 5-15) get to act, dance, sing, and create sets and costumes for each production, to create an entire musical in one week! At the end of the whirlwind week, family and friends are invited to watch the campers perform.

“I loved doing all the plays.  The singing and dancing were fun too, but acting was the best. The counselors made it a lot of fun, and I would love to do it again next summer!”  Oscar Mattocks, age 5, 2016 summer camper

IMG_4289We will also offer full-day dance camps for girls and boys wanting to try out different forms of dance. Get a taste of sassy jazz and musical theater, find the freedom of modern dance, and the long lines of ballet. Try out the infectious rhythms of tap and hip hop, and colorful dances from around the world. Throw in some games and crafts, and you’ve got an experience a budding dancer can’t resist! This “sampler platter” of dance styles is open for ages 8-11 the week of June 19-23, and ages 6-8 the week of June 26-30.

Perfect for young dancers ages 3-5, we’ll offer a half-day Creative Movement camp (July 24-28) exploring popular storybooks through dance! From the Very Hungry Caterpillar to Where the Wild Things Are, these classic stories will provide rich inspiration for little minds and bodies to express their creativity.

Parent Jodi Romer signed both her young daughters up for Creative Movement camp last year:

“As a parent, I loved that I could send my girls to camp together and I loved how it was a very fun and relaxed atmosphere. The teachers there are all wonderful! The show at the end was so adorable and we got to see what the kids worked on all week.” Jodi Romer

The School at City Arts, which runs year-round classes and workshops, is only one of three branches of the Dance Project, which also presents the NC Dance Festival, a statewide showcase of NC professional modern and contemporary choreographers, and the Van Dyke Dance Group, a local dance company that performs the repertory of nationally-renowned Jan Van Dyke. For more than 25 years, the Dance Project has been inspiring, educating, and entertaining Greensboro and the state through these programs, and we are the only organization with all three components. The Festival and the Company represent invaluable resources to our students, who are able to experience professional-quality dance close-up and in-depth, and stay connected to statewide and national standards in dance.

IMG_2007At the Dance Project, we believe that dance offers more than just an artistic experience; it can be a means to health, creative thinking and self-expression, inspiration, cultural understanding, and just plain fun. Whether you have a young child who can’t stop dancing around the house or a teen who looking for a creative outlet; if you’ve always wanted to try out a class yourself, or you’ve been meaning to put on your jazz shoes again after all these years, we’ve got summer fun for you at Dance Project!

The 2017 summer schedule will be live on our website on February 6! For more information or to register, visit our website: www.danceproject.org.

*Sponsored by Dance Project