Nutcracker 1776
We are very excited for our upcoming Nutcracker 1776 performances this year and we hope you and are family are too. We have 6 productions this year, 2 showing at the Merriam Theater at the University of the Arts and 4 showing at Centennial Hall at Haverford College.
Merriam Theater
at The University of the Arts
(located at 250 South Broad Street, Philadelphia, PA 19102)
Sat. Dec. 5 at 2 pm
Sun.Dec. 6 at 2 pm
Centennial Hall
The Haverford School
(located at 450 Lancaster Avenue, Haverford, PA 19041)
Sat. Dec. 12 at 11 am & 4 pm
Sun.Dec. 13 at 1 pm & 4 pm
Please, enjoy some photos from The Rock School’s Nutcracker 1776 performances last year: *click to enlarge
Don’t forget to watch our Nutcracker 1776 preview:
Pirouette Contests at the Marine Club
Rock School downtime - Pirouette Contest from A. Spassoff on Vimeo.
We’ll be checking in regularly with The Rock School’s Residence Director, Holly Monsen, to give a student perspective on what happens outside the studios. Last week, during down time in the residence hall lounge, the dancers practiced pirouettes on the tiled floor with a spinning board. The board is made up of a simple small plank of plastic with some cloth on the back to allow for easy gliding on the floor.Rock School downtime - Pirouette Contest II from A. Spassoff on Vimeo.
Holly said it turned into a bit of a contest, with some of our dancers doing up to 30 pirouettes in one try. It’s a pleasure to see Rock School students working hard, but more importantly enjoying themselves, learning from one another and putting their time and energy towards something they really love.Eva Szabo - Chaînés
Last week I sat in on Eva Szabo’s class and found an intriguing method she used to teach her level 2/2X class how to do Chaînés. The most common formation of Chaînés is to keep your feet in first position, keeping your legs and heels tight together. As Szabo explained, “it’s about turning, not moving across the room.” It’s not about stepping, it’s spinning in a straight line, like a chain link.
To help her students keep their legs and heels tight together she improvised by grabbing her teaching folder and having them do Chaînés with the folder in between their legs. The tricky part was not dropping it while spinning.
RockReach Gets Congressional Praise
We here at the Rock School are honored to have received such high recognition from First District of New Jersey Congressman Robert E. Andrews.
Congressman Andrews praised the Rock School in a Congressional Report for its services to the community in the Philadelphia and Camden area with its RockReach Program and ability to inspire:
The Rock School engages and enriches local communities through its comprehensive outreach programs. More than 10,000 inner city children and their families take part in the School’s outreach program annually. The Rock School and its RockReach program create positive opportunities for inner city children to participate in productive, stimulating activities.
Faculty teacher and head of the RockReach Program, Sarah Cooper, is praised, so be sure to congratulate her for the success of the Rock School’s outreach program:
The RockReach program, directed by Sarah Cooper, brings dance to life for Philadelphia and Camden students. Dancers from the school perform at local schools, teach dance lessons, and open their faculties up to the local community.
Here’s a photo of the Congressional Record (click on the image to view in a larger size)
During the Summer Intensive Program, RockReach performed at the Mann Center for two workshops. During these workshops, Rock School students and teachers display ballet to children from various schools and care centers. It’s exciting for both parties involved, because the dancers have the opportunity to share their passion for dance and the kids get to see ballet (for most, it’s their first time!).
There are eager children that often ask questions such as, “how do you spin in a circle without getting dizzy?” or “how do you have your feet turned like that?” In exchange, the dancers ask the kids what their passions are, one girl said soccer another said bowling and one boy exclaimed, “Pizza”! Whatever their passions are, the dancers motivate them to strive for what they love, whether it’s dance, music, art, or pizza.
Here are some photos from one of the Mann Center workshops with Rock School students Miguel, Kathryn, Gabe, Maria and Rock School teacher Gabrielle Guma.
Along with the Mann Center workshops, RockReach coordinated a performance for 6,000 children, also at the Mann Center, entitled indepenDANCE. This year’s performance was its 10th year anniversary.
Here are some more photos from the Mann Center indepenDANCE performance, but if you haven’t seen it on the Rock School Youtube account yet, we also have a time-lapse video of the day’s exciting events.
Congratulations again to Sarah Cooper and the RockReach program. RockReach has progressed tremendously in the past year. We’re currently operating in the following schools: Chester Community Charter School, the Isaac Sheppard school, the Ludlow James Elementary school, Russell Byers charter school, and two Congreso schools - Julia De Burgos and Fair Hill Elementary. We’ve also doubled our amount of residencies in the past year, meaning more students are being inspired by our very own dancers and want to dance themselves.
The Curtis Institute of Music and The Rock School for Dance education collaborated on a new ballet. The Rock School’s Ballet Mistress, Mariaelena Ruiz choreographed a ballet to Curtis Institute composer Wang Jie’s new ballet composition.
More photos from the Rock School’s performance at the Mann Center
Here are some candid shots from backstage at the Mann Center for the Rock School’s INDEPENDANCE performance.
These are photos from rehearsals the Rock School has had over the past two weeks. Resident instructor Servy Gallardo is featured. The students and teachers have been working hard, rehearsing on weekends and putting in extra time perfecting each and every plie, step and movement.
Yesterday, we had a visit from former Rock School dancer Julie Green. Green danced at the Rock School from the time she was in 7th grade until her senior year of high school. ”Some of the same teachers were still here, like Bo and Stephanie were teachers at the school [laughs],” said Green. Now, Green is a physical therapist with her MSPT/OCS at the NovaCare clinic on 4th and Bainbridge.
She came to visit the Rock School to give the students a seminar in physical therapy in order to help students prevent injuries and to improve their technique. This visit was Julie’s second out of the 6 week summer program, and she’ll be back again for a third during the last two weeks.
Green became a physical therapist after having an ankle injury as a dancer:
Like most dancers, I had several injuries. One injury, a particular ankle injury, I had to go get physical therapy, and I found that interesting. I was always interested in the body, as a dancer, and in science. So I knew I wanted to go into something that was in the medical field, and physical therapy just seemed like the perfect fit, because it’s very active. Then working with dancers was an even more perfect fit.
Some words of advice from Julie Green:
Unfortunately, it [getting injured] is part of being a dancer. You can actually come out of an injury sometimes, stronger. Every dancer thinks that that injury is going to end their training or end their career, but dancers of all levels and abilities get injured and come out of those injuries, and like I said, sometimes stronger. The main thing is to focus on your recovery. It always seems like injuries occur right before you’re about to do a big show or something like that, but the important thing is that you get better and that you prevent it from happening again.
A lot of dancers get injured and they push through it and they don’t really want to face the fact that they’re injured, and they keep dancing with the injury and then they end up with a worse injury.
They work so hard to do what they love and they spend so much time doing what they love, just taking some extra time, which I know sometimes it seems like there isn’t any, to help prevent injuries. It will allow them to keep doing what they love more often and not to have these emotionally devastating injuries, in inopportune times. I do a lot of emotional counseling too, along with the physical therapy.
A specific example:
I had a professional dancer, shockingly, she had never been injured before. Which is rare. She had never been injured before, and then tragically, two days before opening for Nutcracker, she was going to do the lead, she fractured her foot. That was very emotionally devastating, and like I said, she came back even stronger than before, and we were able to focus on other things to make her stronger overall as a whole dancer. She came back stronger, and the next program, she was back to doing the lead again.
Sometimes when you’re out of dance because of an injury, it can seem like forever, but when you look in the whole scheme of things. Especially the young dancers, they can’t stop dancing. They’re training for this summer program or they’re training for a performance, they can’t stop, they can’t take a rest. When you look at the whole picture, when you look at your career ahead. When you deal with this injury now, you hopefully won’t have to deal with it later. So I like to encourage younger dancers that if you take a week or two off or even longer, you’ll get back, you’ll get stronger, and you won’t have to deal with it later.
Some quick advice that I picked up from her seminar:
The best time to stretch is after class and you should hold a stretch for 20-30 seconds. Dancers are accustomed to stretching, but they often stretch the same muscles and coincidently disregard some pretty important ones. Some muscles to give some attention to are your big toe, your hamstrings, quadraceps, hip flexors and most importantly your calves. According to Julie, there are two reasons you should always stretch your calves: (1) It’ll help with your jumping, because you can get a deeper plie when you land a jump so you can get up higher. (2) Tight calves can cause a lot of problems. A lot of tendonitis in your ankle and stress fractures in your feet.
When injured, ICE is always a safe way to go if you’re unsure what to do for your injury. Putting heat on an injury can cause more swelling and can prolong the time of injury. Heat is useful for loosening muscles, but when an injury first occurs, ice is always a good idea.
R. I. C. E. principle
Rest
Ice
Compression - very very important
Elevation
Alternative Training is a good way to decrease the chance of injury and improve technique. I know it’s hard to find time outside of dancing, but it’s good to swim, bike or do pilates outside of dance to strengthen muscles that aren’t getting trained in the studios.
Julie stressed some technique corrections too:
-Heels not down with jumping - calf stretches
*can cause stress fractures, shin splints, achilles tendonitis
-don’t roll in - ankle and hip strengthening
*can cause knee pain, bunions, ankle pain
-don’t force your turnout - hip stretches & strength
*can cause hip pain, knee pain, or ankle pain.
If you missed this physical therapy seminar
Tomorrow Rock School students will have a nutrition seminar in the Rock Cafefrom 11:45-12:30 and another one in Studio F from 1:15-2:00pm.
Sunday, the Rock School went to New York City. It was a fun-filled day beginning with a ferry cruise to Manhattan past the Statue of Liberty. Then, students got lunch and had an opportunity to shop around the South Street Seaport Mall. I caught up with the students at 54th and Broadway for a matinee of Shrek the Musical.
It was a hilarious performance, and the set designs were so intricate, it was hard to keep up with all the moving parts of the stage. ”Lord Farquaad”, played by Christopher Sieber, danced on his knees most of the time, imitating Farquaad’s short stature. The plot stayed true to the original Shrek movie, but I think even for students that haven’t seen the film, it was an enjoyable show with great acting and singing to support it. The musical was a nice break after walking around New York City all day. Rock School students really enjoyed this performance, it’s just a shame the theatre was so cold!
The chilly air and side splitting laughter eventually caught up to the Rock School students and we were ready for dinner at Planet Hollywood. There, we explored handprints left by stars like Michael J. Fox and walked around snapping photos of the various movie and music memorabilia.
After dinner, the Rock School went to the Lincoln Center, where we had and an hour and a half to explore the buildings of New York City Ballet, the Juilliard School, School of American Ballet, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Inc., etc. Students struck various poses all around the Lincoln Center and had time to wind down after a long day of exploring New York City.
If you have any photos from the trip that you’d like to share with the Rock School blog, please, get in touch with Tiffany here: yoont@therockschool.net
This morning, the Rock School scoped out the Mann Center for the upcoming “IndepenDANCE” performance on Tuesday, August 4th. The Mann Center has housed everything from the Stuttgart Ballet, Mikhail Baryshnikov and American Ballet Theatre to the Beach Boys, Talking Heads and the Philadelphia Orchestra. It’s really quite an honor to be able to say you once stood on the same stage as these great names.
Each year, selected Ballet Intensive students (attending the 6-week session and levels 3X through 6) have the wonderful opportunity to perform in this beautiful space.
Just imagine when these seats are filled with 6000 excited kids in the audience!
Please join us, the show starts at 11:00am.
More information on the Rock School’s free Mann Center performance here.
It was a pleasure sitting in on a 2X class taught by Rock School Directors Bo and Stephanie Spassoff. Stephanie has been sitting in on classes for the past two weeks, determing whether students are ready to move up. All the while, she’s encouraged and groomed students to improve.
Parents, don’t forget! The last week of your child’s stay here with us at the Rock School, parents are allowed to sit in classes to observe. We’re coming to the close of our second week of the Summer Ballet Intensive so parent’s of those only attending two weeks of classes can sit in this week.
Students hang out after registering
Rock School students eating outside
Group from Kyone O. Ballet & Co. LTDA
Registration for rooms
Kristy Latham returns to the RS
Isaac Hernández teaches partnering
Kara Hanretty returns to the RS
Kristy Lathram returns to the RS
Sandhurst Miggins doing push ups
Isaac Hernández teaching
It was a hectic, but beautiful day on Sunday for Rock School students registering at Cabrini College. Students flew in from all over the country in preparation for their six week summer camp with the Rock School. I met girls from Utah, Conneticut and there was even a group of girls from Brazil that were accompanied by their two instructors. We’ll have a more thorough interview with this unique group of students in later posts to come.
It’s been an exciting week for new and old students, but it’s been an especially nostalgic first couple of days for the Rock School. Many former students and teachers have returned for the summer program, and though most will not be staying the entire 6 weeks, it’s been reunion after reunion for the brief time together.
Some highlights of the week:
Maiquie Manosa, former principal teacher at the Rock School, is with us until the end of next week. She’s a lovely teacher, terrific with the younger children, and she’s just simply amazing to watch while dancing.
Gold Medalist Isaac Hernández has returned to the Rock School and is teaching classes all week, but he will unfortunately be leaving Philadelphia by next week. Isaac is the older brother to RS student Esteban Hernández, winnner of the Mexico’s National Youth Award (read more about it here).
These are Isaac’s very first classes, but he’s already had an impressive impact on the students at the Rock School. During his partnering class, girls that Isaac chose to demonstrate with nearly blushed. He’s had a heavy teaching schedule, but Isaac has paced himself and has had visits from old friends and peers.
One guest student of Isaac’s included his old friend Sandhurst Miggins, formerly a student of the Rock School’s. He actually began dancing with the Rock School during a summer intensive, later being invited back with a one year scholarship. Miggins is now an up and coming model in New York, after winning second place in a highly competitve race on Bravo’s “Make Me A Supermodel 2”. He’s had prestigious companies such as Dior interested in him and plans to audition for films. Sandhurst had to leave Philadelphia, but he’ll be keeping in touch with the Rock School and sharing what exciting shoots and events he’s been attending.
Be sure to check back in with the blog for more photos and updates from the Rock School. Some posts to look forward to:
Interviews with Isaac Hernández, the Brazilian group from Byone O. Ballet & Co. LTDA and returning RAPA student Kristy Latham. Also check back in for updates on field trips, latest events and fun found in between and during classes.
