Notes from Amanda

POSTED 1/8/10 Happy New Year!

January Preview:
Jan tuition is due on or before your first class for the month. Those of you in the autodebit system, your fees were processed on 1/5/10. The costume fees are assessed at this time as well ($25 for Dance Stories and Dance and Art in Me, $20 for all other classes - adult classes are optional, please talk to your teacher). More details about costumes on the next page. The concert is on Sat., June 12th, early afternoon. Please mark your calendars.

New Class! Irish Dance - Saturday 3:45-4:45 for 7-12 yrs. and 4:45-5:45 for 12 and up
Student Dance Company will be starting back up Sunday 1/17/10 from 2-4. All students 7 and up are eligible to join! Call the studio for more information or click the link in the side bar.
Bill T. Jones Dance Company performing Jan. 22-23. Order tickets at UMS and get a discount with this code: DANCESTUDIO. Read my article in this month's AA Observer.

December Recap:
Christina Sears Etter (tap, modern, and Director of People Dancing) and I attended the Arts Alliance Convergence Conference. We performed an improvisation and attended several great sessions on Arts in Education, Social Media, the Art Walk, and a great new web portal for the Arts which should be operational in February. If any of you are interested in joining the Arts Alliance, check out their website: http://www.a2artsalliance.org/. They are doing great work to get the Arts re-integrated into life and politics! Christina and I were encouraged and inspired to continue our work as dance educators and artsits.

The Open House was great fun! Thanks to all the music teachers (Nermis Mieses, Natalie Clyne, Gloria Dunn, John Latinin, Sam Genson, Kelly Close, Barbara Rylander, Criss Sayre Jr., Sherry Young) who prepared their students for such terrific performances. Thanks to our accomplished accompanist, Xavier Suarez, for his composure and flexibility. Thanks to the dance teachers, Christina Sears Etter and Chris Golus, who presented informative and fun demonstrations. Thanks to the brave improvisers (Christina Sears Etter, Chris Golus and Kerry Allan) who danced with me at the end of the event. Thanks to the parents who support their children in their pursuit of an education in dance and music. And thanks most of all to the students who participated (Kira Peck, Jessica, Ella and Adam Curry, Joey Rhode, Paradise Taylor, Alex Pinter, Christopher and Lisa Read, Prya Kundu, Kate Etter, Fiona Powell, JJ Etter, Walker Baron, Devon Reed Twiss, Autumn Harris, Isabel Ratner, Scott Goodheart, Erin Nelson, Mariaida Pando Girard, Thomas Schramm) without whom Arts in Motion would not exist. And we collected 33 pounds of food for Food Gatherers! Congratulations all on a job well done. Go to the Arts in Motion facebook page to see photos and YouTube for a video clip of the event.

And congratulations to Maya Foster on winning our First Annual Essay Contest. Read the full text of her essay at http://artsinmotion.net/essaycontest.html.