NORWICH – To the choreographers of the 2011 Perkins School of the Arts dance recital, there’s no such thing as over-ambition.
Seeing the beauty in shattering glass, the humor in a Seurat painting and the visions abounding in a school-aged child’s head – and attempting to depict it all with dance – is indeed akin to watching pigs fly, which they don’t.
But those porkers actually do, and it all will happen, on the Norwich High School stage beginning tomorrow night with Perkins’ first of four recital productions called, “When Pigs Fly.”
The saying is often used for humorous effect and to scoff at over-ambition. Studio co-owner Mikey Perkins said older dance students this year seemed to internalize the nation’s faltering economy, and were often stressed out about their over-booked schedules and the cost and competitiveness of getting into college.
“I hear so many people trying to shoot down a dream or an activity. There are always so many stipulations put onto things. We’re trying to be positive and happy and encouraging for the kids, to say, ‘Yeah, it will happen,’” he said when describing his choice of the recitals’ moniker.
“Everybody’s had to make adjustments. Now that it’s finally more of a hopeful time, I’d like to be able to reflect that.”
The first show gets underway at 7 p.m. Friday night in the high school auditorium, on Midland Drive. It continues on Saturday with a matinee performance at 1 p.m. and an evening performance again at 7. The final recital takes place at 1 p.m. on Sunday.
Award winning performers will leap, tap and twirl across the stage in all styles of dance choreographed by the studio’s teachers, a handful of them professional dancers themselves. The Amber Perkins School of the Arts is well known in the dance world for its study in modern dancing and adagio, experimenting with styles from Martha Graham and Katherine Dunham to ethnic African and urban hip hop.
Mikey and Amber Perkins, along with teachers Travis St. Denny, Christina Jensen, Samantha Valashinas and Thomas Sutter, have choreographed numbers for the studio’s combined roster of well over 300 dancers. New, state-of-the-art lighting, props and on stage screen projections serve as a backdrop for the matinees, which feature the younger performers – and the evening shows, which feature the advanced dancers, including five graduating seniors.
