UNITY — Unity’s Flourish Dance Studio, owned and operated by Amy Briggs, kicked off the spring dance recital season in the Press-Herald area, with its first annual dance recital, April 22.
The show had everything you expect to see at a community recital: colourful costumes, lots of sparkles, multiple genres of dance and music, feats of flexibility, gravity-defying leaps across the stage, sweet little ones performing for the first time, older students strutting their stuff and some of the dance instructors showing they still can do it all.
Along with the jazz, tap, ballet, hip-hop, lyrical and acrobatic dances, the evening also included two lip-sync numbers. Aspen Gerein and Mercedez Magnus injected some humour into the evening with a funny duet routine – choreographed by Briggs herself – to a medley of songs. Their number was entitled “Dumb and Dumber.”
Havenn Magnus lip-synced to the song Popular. Her choreography was done by Elizabeth Erker, who is the jazz coach for the University of Saskatchewan dance team. Erker performed a jazz solo for the audience.
Other dance instructors who performed were Melany Sander (lyrical) and Madison Wildeman (acro). Wildeman also paired up with student Saige Heck to perform a crowd-pleasing jazz duet, as well as dancing a contemporary solo, choreographed by Caprice Sherwood.
Sander is an instructor at the Wilkie School of Dance and three of her students attended as guest dancers to perform solos: Avery Strus (lyrical), Mila Irwin (tap) and Leighton Forbes (jazz). Jenessa Bakken also attended as a guest performer from the Wilkie School of Dance. She danced a ballet number choreographed by Teal Hoenecke.
Along with the teachers already named, Brianna Bakken also helps out with the tap students, choreographing two tap solos.
At the end of the evening, four students were recognized with special awards. From the youngest group, Carter Halter was most promising and Rori Tiffin was most improved. Among the intermediate dancers, most promising was Saige Heck and most improved was Mercedez Magnus.
Sales of 50/50 tickets at the year-end recital raised $415 which will go towards the studio’s “sponsor a dancer” program for 2023-24. Briggs explained, “This pays for costumes, fees, travel and everything in between.” The application form is available at the website, under Dance and then Bursary.
Flourish students and instructors attended several dance competitions this year. Everyone, even the three-year-olds, hit the big stage at Kindersley Konnection Dance Festival. The older students performed at Dance Evolution in Fort Saskatchewan, Alta. Solos, duets and trios danced on the TCU Place stage in Saskatoon for The Performer.
“A total of 41 awards were given to our incredible choreographers and dancers this season,” Briggs said.
“The students worked extremely hard and it definitely showed with their rewards.”
Briggs summed up the year, saying, “Our first dance season, we surpassed our expectation of student attendance with a total of 35 wonderful students for our Christmas program. In the new year … we had 23 of those students carry on for … our competitive dance season. We love having both options – non-competitive and competitive – as there is something for everyone.
“As our first spring dance recital comes to an end, it really is only the very beginning … I am so grateful for my family, staff, dance parents and of course students. One does really become a family and my heart is so humbled by this incredible experience. It takes a tribe to make anything like this possible so thank you to the community for all the support and love. The kids deserve the world.”
