Orbit Theatre Company ampamp Perf Arts Academy Daytona Beach

Dancers at Orbit Performing Arts Academy won't become to feel the rush of performing for a live audience atop The News-Journal Center stage this year.

Orbit had been planning its annual recital, a celebration of its theater, music and dance troupes, earlier the coronavirus pandemic struck. It was going to be even more special this year as a celebration for the Port Orange academy's 10th anniversary. COVID-nineteen, however, had other plans.

Instead of their usual performance at the Daytona Beach venue, Orbit will screen a video of its prerecorded dance recital at Daytona Embankment Bulldoze-In Christian Church Fri evening.

"This was supposed to be our large 10 year ceremony for Orbit with Mary and I," said Tosha Williams, who co-owns the academy with Mary Gelow-Dessoye. "And we really had planned a blowout, you lot know, a big spectacular event. So we had to come up up with a creative manner to make this happen."

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Information technology may not be the big anniversary bash they predictable, but dancers and leaders at the academy are excited just to host their recital one way or another this Friday. It took a lot of dedication, imagination and hard work to pull information technology off.

The university airtight at the beginning of April, when the number of coronavirus cases started to climb, and Williams and Gelow-Dessoye apace had to figure out how to transition to hosting dance classes via Zoom for roughly 100 students.

Dancers Madison Glover, xiv, Emily Rule, x and Emily Pedraza, ix, agreed that having dance classes by themselves in their living rooms was a bit strange.

"It was different because I'chiliad pretty sure nosotros all miss dance, and y'all miss your friends," Pedraza said.

Students were able to return to the studio in May, when Phase 2 of reopening Florida's economy began.

"It was definitely very odd having to practice school and trip the light fantastic toe both on the computer, but it was really exciting to come dorsum to class later on and come across everybody and that we've missed and oasis't been able to come across that nosotros've known for years," Rule said. "In the cease, it was very heady to come back and but exercise it."

They had only five weeks to learn the choreography for their upcoming recital, when they otherwise would've started weeks earlier. Plus, the trip the light fantastic moves were a fleck different than they were used to. Information technology's non normal to dance without existence close together, or touching, or while wearing a mask.

"We did have to modify a lot of our choreography merely because we had to try to go on them from touching, like, they might take to put their hand on a shoulder, and now nosotros had to alter that, just to kind of keep it then rubber for everybody," Gelow-Dessoye said. "They've really adapted well to, you know, dealing with something that they weren't expecting."

The music students made coronavirus-safe adjustments as well.

"We did have a musical theater number, just due to singing, we had to tell them that we're yet going to practise the movements and just vox the words, don't really sing it, because nosotros obviously didn't want to spread any germs," Gelow-Dessoye said.

Williams and Gelow-Dessoye hired a videographer to shoot the in-house performance, which they originally planned to share with a YouTube launch party.

"Just we thought, you know, with all this going on, we didn't get to practice anything really special. Why not accept a drive-in movie night? So, the Bulldoze-In Christian Church was so kind to let u.s.a. practise that," Williams said. "We get to have our own bulldoze-in movie, which I call back is pretty cool, specially for the kids. They didn't really even know what a drive-in movie is before this."

The theme for the recital is Our Town, inspired from all the community support poured into Orbit over the years, Gelow-Dessoye and Williams said.

"We wanted to thank our community for supporting us over the years, supporting the students, beingness business sponsors, helping out with altruistic objects that we might need for props and backdrops, supporting the kids, helping out with some of their competition fees, helping out with their fundraisers," Gelow-Dessoye said. "And then nosotros are naming it Our Town and are very proud of our community."

That community support has helped Orbit abound from its humble get-go 10 years ago, performing Saturdays on Silvery Sands Middle School'southward stage, where Williams taught chorus. They eventually moved into a 900-foursquare-foot business unit of measurement and converted the modest space into a studio "because that literally was all we could afford," Williams said.

"For competition numbers and musical numbers, we would actually go really early in the morning and rehearse out in the parking lot before it was also hot, because we didn't really have enough space," Williams said.

They moved into their electric current space with roughly 4,200 foursquare feet five years ago.

"We've really been able to aggrandize the opportunities for our students and actually get more of our friends downwardly from New York that do main classes and so have taken the kids every other year up to New York to do workshops and run into shows,

Now, the academy serves more than than 100 students ranging in age from 2 to 72.

Dominion has been dancing at Orbit for near vi years, and her favorite genre is modern trip the light fantastic. She and her peers said they were grateful they could still get together to dance during the pandemic.

"I like how there's so many different ways to express what's going on in your story that you're telling as you're dancing. And and then many genres, so many types of moves, placements, to express what'due south going on." Rule said.

"I love how unique (dancing) is and how different it is," said Glover, an Orbit student of half-dozen years who loves jazz dancing. "It's a new challenge and how like, you take to piece of work at information technology and go on practicing to go better at information technology."

Orbit'south membership dropped from 187 students in March to 96 on the day the recital was recorded. For those that remain, important learning experiences can exist fatigued from this feel, said former Orbit pupil Logan Anthony.

Anthony attended Orbit his junior and senior years of high school and now frequents New York City's Broadway each year equally a professional dancer. He's returned back domicile to stay with family amid the pandemic and is passing the lessons he's learned down to Orbit's young students.

"A twenty-four hours or two ago, my amanuensis from New York Urban center contacted me and said that the national Broadway tour of 'Cats' is holding auditions, and they want y'all to audition. They sent me three videos of dances that I had to learn off of video, not even livestream, they just recorded video. I learned information technology, I videotaped information technology myself, and then I sent it in," he said. "Online auditioning is very much going to become the norm, and exposing immature performers at this developmental age of their creative endeavors is very, very crucial to the new field that is developing."

Glover is optimistic she'll exist able to put those skills to utilize one day.

"It was definitely challenging, just I feel similar it'south a new experience that nosotros might need later in life," she said.

For Orbit's owners, the manner to thrive through the coronavirus pandemic, it seems, is to turn a difficult situation into a positive outcome.

"We're only and so grateful that nosotros were able to do (the recital), record it, it's washed, and now we can gloat it on Friday," Gelow-Dessoye said.

Orbit Performing Arts Academy's 10th annual showcase

WHEN: 8 p.one thousand. Fri

WHERE: Daytona Beach Drive-In Christian Church, 3140 S. Atlantic Ave., Daytona Beach Shores

Price: Free, with donations accepted

INFO: Call 386-405-1465 or observe the academy on Facebook at facebook.com/OrbitPerformingArtsAcademy

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Source: https://www.news-journalonline.com/story/entertainment/arts/2020/07/22/dancing-in-pandemic-volusia-performing-arts-academy-to-host-virtual-recital-for-10th-anniversary/112691314/