Children Dancing Together Again, Rehearsing "Nutcracker"

Evansville IN

18 November, 2021

3:30 PM

Description

By John Gibson, WNIN November 18, 2021 The Children's Center for Dance Education is gearing up for the return of performances before live audiences. Founder Deena Laska-Lewis says during the pandemic last year, the center provided kids with ballet bars and flooring at their homes for safe, online dance classes. "Everybody was able to dance together on Zoom for about two-and-half months with their own bar from our studio." Lewis says federal assistance and some belt-tightening kept the non-profit afloat. Now, she says the full troupe is back together. "We are finally now to the point that they have their point shoes on for two-and-a-hlf hours and they are running their variations all the way through." The kids are preparing for performances of the Children's Nutcracker, a 70-minute version of Tchaikovsky's holiday ballet. It opens December 3rd at Thrall's Opera House in New Harmony, followed by performances in Jasper, Henderson, Evansville, and Vincennes. Tickets are $15 and can be purchased at childdance.org. The Vanderburgh Community Foundation is providing 2,000 free tickets to area schools. Lewis stressed the importance of dance. "To be able to dance together is an emotional neccessity. You don't have to be a ballerina but you do have to be able to physically move with other kids. It's dance therapy." WNIN is the NPR/PBS affiliate in Evansville, Indiana. We serve Southwestern Indiana, Western Kentucky and Southern Illinois from our multimedia facility located on the Ohio River in downtown Evansville. For the past several years, the recognized quality of our local news has placed us among the best small market radio news organizations in the nation.