©2006 The Chestnut Hill Local

Mt. Airy dance school has teens reaching for the sky
by PAULA M. RILEY

Tatum Regan, of Chestnut Hill, played the Fairy Godmother in the Philadelphia Dance Theatre’s performance of Cinderella.

When Emily Becker starts her first year at John Hopkins University this September, she will bring with her much more than a diploma from Wissahickon High School. She will take the discipline, time management skills and self-confidence that 10 years of dancing with the Pennsylvania Dance Conservatory (PDC) have given her.

She will also bring tremendous memories and deep friendships she made at PDC. “It’s truly my second family,” she says. After coming to dance four to five nights a week since she was eight, she’s having a hard time imagining her life without it. “I can’t think about it without crying,” Becker explains.

Becker sits on the floor in the three-story building on Mt. Airy’s New Covenant Campus that Philadelphia Dance Theatre and its school – Pennsylvania Dance Conservatory - call home. She sews ribbon on her point shoes and talks of the role that PDC and dance have played in her life. Next to her is Brittany Blount, a fellow dancer and freshman at Pembroke High. The two high school students speak with confidence and poise, sharing their dancing experiences.

As they tell stories of challenging technique classes, the instructors’ high standards and the quality of the dance company’s performances, you would think this was the highly competitive, cold environment you hear about at dance studios. Take a closer look, and you will find it is quite the opposite.

Julianna Buchanan, of Mt. Airy (from left); Emily Becker and Emily Lamberg, both of Ambler, were Cinderella and the stepsisters in a recent Philadelphia Dance Theatre performance of Cinderella. (Photos by Susan Pardys)

“It’s the atmosphere that makes this place so special,” explains Blount. Joining her in describing the warm, supportive environment of their studio, Beckers adds, “Yes this is a very competitive studio but not like other dance studios; here we are taught to compete against ourselves and work hard to reach our own potential.”

Joy Delaney Capponi is the director of Pennsylvania Dance Conservatory and artistic director and resident choreographer of the Philadelphia Dance Theatre. She considers PDC a serious, structured dance studio with high standards. Working individually to set goals for each student, the staff provides regular evaluations for their dancers. The teachers gradually introduce more discipline while pacing the instruction to each student’s ability.

“A dance teacher needs to have a good eye so he or she can identify what’s wrong and tell their dancer specifically how to fix the dance. It is so important to deliver that message carefully. They communicate that it’s the step they want to fix, not the person,” Capponi explains.

The instructors have experience from numerous ballet companies and include a charter member of the Pennsylvania Ballet Company and graduates of the School of American Ballet, Juilliard and National Ballet Schools.

“We are here to serve the students and do everything we can to give them an excellent class,” Capponi says. “Every class bring them one step closer to becoming a better dancer.” The school has requirements each member must fulfill in ballet technique and point classes, but it also offers jazz, tap and hip-hop.

PDC’s dance company, Philadelphia Dance Theatre, delivers two major performances a year in which the entire company can participate, though everyone must audition. “Auditioning - this is what makes these kids so outstanding,” Capponi says. “It is such an incredibly hard thing to do. They know how to handle the entire audition experience, not just the audition but the selections as well. They understand that the best dancer is the one who gets the part and they realize that putting someone with a lesser skills level on stage is not good for the company or the dancer’s self-esteem.”

For Becker and Blount, the performances have been wonderful experiences. “We are lucky because at PDC, we have many performance opportunities,” Becker explains, “My favorite times are every time I get to bow. It’s the benefit of the performance without all of the stress. I just love it!”

Blount’s face lights up when she talks about performing. Unlike Becker, she never gets butterflies and can’t wait to hit the stage. “It’s such a rush,” she says. “I absolutely love to be on stage. It’s what I’ve been working towards all year.”

Each year the company produces The Nutcracker in December and a different show each spring. Spring shows have included Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. “The magic of this place is the impact it has on the kind of person she is growing into,” Stacy Kent says of her 10-year old daughter, Thuy Wyckoff, adding, “PDC has a way of developing her whole person.”

This development comes from exposing students to different experiences. Students can attend dance seminars on ballet history and field trips to ballet performances. They do community service activities such as performing at Fall for the Arts Festival, Mt. Airy Day, Ronald McDonald House and the Abramson Center.

PDC has served its students well. Laura Mackay studied ballet for six years at the Pennsylvania Dance Conservatory before graduating high school and becoming a professional dancer with Roxey Ballet Company of New Jersey. She considers her training at PDC the absolute best she could have received. MacKay attended countless summer programs at various dance schools across the country only to find the instructors harshly critical, belittling students and with lower standards of quality.

“PDC is a warm and inviting place that tailors instruction to the individual needs of each student,” she says. “There’s no studio like it, anywhere.”

The Pennsylvania Dance Conservatory is located at 7500 Germantown Ave., Baird Hall, on the New Covenant Campus. You can contact them at 215-247-4272 or philadancetheatre.org.