UW’s Snowy Range Summer Dance Festival celebrates its 25th anniversary this month
with a 10-day intensive of professional-level training and performance opportunities
for participants ages 12 through adult. Both a Student Showcase and Gala Concert will
be open to the public. Past participants, top and middle photos, perform for the public.
Dancers rehearse for a performance, bottom photo, during a previous production. (UW
Photos)
The University of Wyoming’s Snowy Range Summer Dance Festival celebrates its 25th
anniversary this month with a 10-day intensive of professional-level training and
performance opportunities for participants ages 12 through adult.
The festival runs Wednesday, July 14, through Saturday, July 24, and features daily
classes in ballet, modern and jazz, with optional classes in tap, pointe, choreography
and improvisation. Workshops on special topics for studio teachers also will be offered.
Participants study with distinguished faculty from around the world and also perform
work set on them during the culminating Gala Concert.
“We are delighted to host the 25th anniversary of the Snowy Range Summer Dance Festival
in person,” says Margaret Wilson, a UW Department of Theatre and Dance professor of
dance and festival co-director. “While we were able to offer some Zoom classes last
summer with our esteemed faculty, we are happy to be back on campus so that participants
can have a full experience with these artists.”
Festival concerts are open to the public.
The Student Showcase -- highlighting the work of festival participants -- is a free
concert at 7 p.m. Tuesday, July 20, in the UW College of Arts and Sciences auditorium.
The Gala Concert is a ticketed event at 3 p.m. Saturday, July 24, also in the A&S
auditorium. The gala event will feature festival participants as well as showcase
performances by guest artists from the Boston Ballet and the Paul Taylor Dance Company
family.
Tickets for the Gala Concert are available Monday through Friday from 10 a.m.-4 p.m.
at the Buchanan Center for the Performing Arts box office, by calling (307) 766-6666
during box office hours, or by going online at www.uwyo.edu/finearts.
The 25th anniversary event will feature previous dance festival distinguished instructors:
Tony Coppola, of Las Vegas; Lawrence Jackson, formerly with the Cleo Parker Robinson
Dance Ensemble and UW, now teaching at the University of Alabama; Keith and Kellye
Saunders, formerly of Dance Theatre of Harlem, now teaching at Texas Christian University;
and Carol Schuberg, from New York City.
New instructors include Natalie Desch, formerly with the Limon Dance Company, and
Doug Varone and Dancers, now teaching at the University of Utah; and Donald Williams,
formerly with Dance Theatre of Harlem, now living in Las Vegas.
“The high caliber of our teaching artists is unrivaled at any other dance festival
in the region,” Wilson says.
Additionally, the festival will host performing artists Tyson Ali Clark and Chyrstyn
Fentroy, of Boston Ballet, and Amy Young Kleinendorst and Robert Kleinendorst, from
the Paul Taylor Dance Company family.
“Exposure to these artists will leave a lasting impression on the festival participants,
and the students who attend the festival come away with a great appreciation for dance
as a profession and as a renewed passion for their own dancing,” Wilson says. “The
25th anniversary of the festival will be a celebration of our history, but also of
having dancers back on campus and in our wonderful facilities.”
