Put on your feathers and fringe — Dance Fusion is celebrating its 10th anniversary with 37 performances, a silent auction and a Great Gatsby-themed party.
On Sunday, May 4, the Scottsdale-based studio will host a day of festivities at the Cactus Shadows Fine Arts Center, 33606 N. 60th Street, Scottsdale. The highlight: a two-hour, family-friendly showcase featuring a wide range of dance styles performed by more than 100 dancers.
Tickets are available for both the in-person performance and a livestream.
It’s a showcase that has rapidly grown since its first one in 2016. It features both the dancers who take classes at Dance Fusion all year and other performance groups from around the Valley.
The showcase will feature 37 routines and more than 100 dancers performing tap, jazz, musical theater, hip-hop, contemporary, modern ballet, Bollywood, gypsy folk, classical, Indian and belly dance, among others.
It was her studio manager, Gabriella Squicciarini, who has danced with the Ballet Arizona’s adult ballet program for more than 25 years, who suggested the theme of the Great Gatsby for the showcase. Squicciarini had performed to Fergie’s “A Little Party Never Killed Nobody” from the Great Gatsby and suggested it would be a great theme.
“We thought it was cool because it was the Roaring ’20s then and it’s the roaring ’20s now, 100 years later,” Simon said. “We were celebrating and wanted a party atmosphere.”
Simon also believed it was a good fit for a business that is woman-owned and primarily woman-run.
This year’s Great Gatsby-themed showcase will highlight many of the dancers from past shows performing such styles as hip-hop, ballet, jazz, tap and gypsy folk.
“The Roaring ’20s were quite an empowering time for women,” Simon said. “They started changing their outfits and things really started to change. So we thought that would be a fun theme to put out there and just celebrate and be happy being us.”
“The quality and level of the dancers is really top notch,” Simon said. “The teachers that I have at my studio are top-notch teachers.”
These teachers include the retired prima ballerina, Natalia Magnicaballi. She simultaneously led two major ballet companies — Ballet Arizona and the Suzanne Farrell Ballet. She’s performed at the Kennedy Center, the Paris Opera Garnier, the Odeon of Herodes Atticus Theatre, the Mariinsky Theatre and hundreds of others. She’s mastered 38 Balanchine ballets and performed principal roles with international companies.
Another retired prima ballerina is Paola Hartley, who has been with the company since its founding. She was also a principal dancer with Ballet Arizona and danced with the Ballet de Santiago. She was also a member of The Suzanne Farrell Ballet. She’s the founder and executive director of The Hartley Dance Project, which celebrates dance education in Arizona.
“All of our teachers are incredible and wonderful people,” Simon said.
Simon devotes a great deal of time and attention to putting together a show that is diverse in styles, numbers of dancers, lengths and mood.
“I want to vary it so it has a certain pulse to it,” Simon said. “If we have a serious ballet, then I’ll put some fun stuff like a line dance next. I try to get a cadence while accommodating costume changes.”
While 90% of the performers in the showcase are adults, she said she does have a few routines with young dancers and with teenagers. Last year, she said they had 10 little girls on stage with their dads.
“There’s acrobatics, we’ve got hip-hop dancers, there’s all kinds of stuff that we’re doing,” Simon said. “It’s really a lively, exciting show and people who see it love it and people that are in it want to be in it every year.”
In the show’s lobby, they’ll host a silent auction with 40 donated items. They also have vendors selling such items has homemade jewelry and handmade belly dancing costumes.
Simon, who is a chiropractor, hadn’t planned on being a dance studio owner ten years ago. She hadn’t even identified as a dancer for most of her life. She didn’t start dancing until college when she took a jazz dance class. She was taught by Fred Kelly, Gene Kelly’s brother. He then encouraged her to take tap.
However, when college was over, she was off to be a doctor and left the dance world for the next 34 years.
Then she found a local dance studio where she was welcomed.
“It became such an extraordinary part of my life,” Simon said. “I realized, wait a minute, I was always a dancer. I just didn’t know it.”
Then, on April 1, she learned that the dance studio would close.
“It felt like lead just dropped into a room,” Simon said. “It was so sad. I had only known these people for a year, and I felt like I had found my home. There was so much joy and happiness. I loved these people. I loved the community. I could not just see it die. With the love and the passion and the energy that was there, it was like lightning in the bottle.”
She and a business partner decided to find a way to help the community survive. They knew to act quickly so they wouldn’t lose the community. Instead of holding classes in someone else’s studio, they decided to build their own.
“If you want to talk about the universe aligning to make something happen — it happened in 88 days,” Simon said. “We found the studio, we had all the contractors — and you know how hard it is to get contractors. Everybody was on board.”
She described it as a frantic rush to install air conditioning and purchase all the furniture and sound equipment. One of her primary concerns was the flooring. As a chiropractor, safety was her top priority. She wanted a suitable floor to prevent injuries. She found someone willing to donate reclaimed professional flooring that was being removed from a local community college and high school.
Dance Fusion celebrates its 10th anniversary on Sunday, May 4, with a showcase featuring over 37 dance routines performed by more than 100 dancers.
They had their soft opening in July 2015 and their grand opening in September 2015.
“The whole place was a miracle when it came together,” Simon said. “I had a lot of support from the dance community. The dance community in Arizona is a phenomenally wonderful, loving and supportive community. When people come here from other states, they’re amazed at how open, welcoming, sharing and supportive it is.”
Her vision for Dance Fusion was for it to be an adult studio where there were many different styles of dance.
“When you’re 18 and out of school — or even after college — there’s no place to dance,” Simon said. “It ends. You do the competition thing when you’re a kid and it’s over. My vision was to get everybody dancing. We don’t care about age. We don’t care about skill level. It’s great for the body, it’s great for movement, it’s great for the mind.”
After a few years, she did open classes to youth and teens, but they remain a non-competitive studio that provides performing opportunities for dancers who are interested in it.
“We’re not a performance-based studio, but we do perform,” Simon said. “We performed last year in so many places — we performed outside the Herberger and at the State Fair every year. We performed at the Phoenix Raceway. We performed at some country clubs and senior centers.”
They even performed at the Fiesta Bowl parade. With competition off the table, Simon said they are committed to having fun, learning, developing and growing. The people who have been dancing with them have become like family and she is often amazed that it has already been 10 years since they started.
“I have opportunities to perform, but we don’t demand people perform,” Simon said. “We put it out there if they want to do and we don’t care if they don’t.”
Simon said that each dance style creates its own little community, and the showcase serves as an opportunity to unite all these communities.
“That’s honestly the most reward part of all of this,” Simon said. “You know each other and when somebody new comes to the studio, they’re welcomed like they’ve just joined a family. It’s just wonderful. We are all so blessed.”
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