Summer Camp

Meet one of our new student correspondents: Dryden!

Dryden is a 9 year old dedicated to his ballet, art and writing. Dryden has been at Pegasus from Kindermusik age (baby) and is a very hard working student of various art forms... and school of course! This summer, Dryden came to the last two weeks of our summer dance camp. Here is his blog post on the experience. Enjoy.

Summer Camp

By Dryden

　

I thought Pegasus summer camp was absolutely incredible, because I met new friend’s, I loved dancing, and thought art was great! My favourite class was drama, because I really had fun making up our own skit! Lyrical was fun too! We also had Jazz, Music, Modern, Ballet, Choreography, sports games and we went to the park. Friday was the best day of the week because we had pizza lunch and open house. I can’t wait for next year! 

We’ve been busy! Plus… win a pocket camera!

If you are coming back to Pegasus in September you might have noticed the addition of a new studio, the Stage Studio, on our schedule. June was a busy, busy month getting the new space ready for summer camp. At the back of Studio A was a stage that used to host the Pegasus recitals, but the floor was a bit run down and the backstage space was rather small for us, so we moved our recitals to an outside venue a few years back. In the mean time the stage became our costume storage space. We packed it full of racks and bins with over 20 years worth of costumes, props and accessories! It was full! What was also full last year was our schedule… so we moved the costumes to a new home and turned the stage into a shinny new studio! The space feels very new but our summer campers are working it in for us.

But that’s not all we’re doing… Right behind the new studio is a pocket of outside space that has been overgrown bushes for years. We’ve cleared it out and are in the process of turning it into a magical garden for our pre-school program to play, learn and create in! We have grand plans that may not get finished by September but the garden will be started and ready for some outdoor fun… with the finishing touches arriving in due course.

We’re saving the grand reveal for September… that is if you aren’t a summer camper, but we do have one problem that needs some help… we don’t know what to call these two new spaces. For now “Stage Studio” has been the name, but I’m sure with all the creativity at Pegasus we can find something more fun, and our magical, enchanted garden is in dire need of a fantastic title. So we’re holding a contest!!! The winner of the best name for one of the two spaces will win a Samsung Digital Camera so small it fits in your pocket!!! *  

To enter, write your suggestion in our comment section of this blog and make sure to include your name in the body of the comment (these comments will not get posted online). Then we will choose our top three and post them for everyone to vote on!

*Or a gift card for equivalent value

Congrats to our students!



Pegasus Performance Group

To begin our summer blogs we wanted to take one post to say congratulations to our dancers from 2010/2011! We are so proud of all of them for the hard work they put into to each and every dance class. We also are very proud of our dancers who participated in our annual benefit show, Dances of Offering, the RAD ballet exams, all of our recitals and the Pegasus Performance Group. This year the Pegasus Performance Group attended the Kiwanis Festival and yet again came out shinning! The piece “Between Lungs” choreographed by Sheri Kimura won a scholarship in the Lyrical Jazz category!

Pegasus Performance Group

Although we can never thank or acknowledge our fabulous faculty and staff enough for their commitment and talent, this month we want to send out a special thanks to the dancers at Pegasus. It is through the spirit that our students bring to the studio everyday that makes Pegasus the place it is. Thank you for your joy and dedication and congratulations on all that you’ve achieved this year!

 









Performance as an important learning tool

Every year at Pegasus we do a recital to finish off our season. It is a big event for us with hundreds of costumes, professional photographers and lots of parents, grandparents, friends and family in the audience watching out talented students showcase the choreography they have been preparing in the previous months. It is an exciting time but it can also be rather stressful, which may raise the question; what is this experience giving to my child?
Pegasus is built on careful philosophies that are focused on encouraging each student's self-esteem and developing life skills through the tools of dance arts. We strive for this everyday in our classes and the recitals are no different. To us a recital is a chance to celebrate (and show off a bit) the amazing progress that students have made during the year. It is also a time to develop the skills needed to stand in front of a group of people and perform, present, demonstrate, etc. What we hope our students take from recitals is the feeling that they should take pride in their hard work and feel confident to show it to a large group of people.
We know that this task is a hard one to achieve in our society that is continuously judging even our youth, so we appreciate all the work that our faculty, staff, volunteers and, of course, parents contribute to endorsing these lessons. Recital is our time to celebrate the Pegasus community! We can't wait to see you all in the next weeks as we prepare for our Junior and Senior Recitals. 

The Parent Toolbox: What you should ask when choosing a dance school

• What is the philosophy or mandate – Many schools focus on competitions, which endorses competitiveness amongst students, places a lot of pressure on younger dancers and often encourages provocative dancing in inappropriate costumes. Make sure the values you have in raising your children match the values of the school.
• Quality of studio – Sprung dance floors are crucial in preventing injuries in dancers. So when assessing the studio’s facilities make sure to ask if they have proper dance flooring. Change rooms, waiting rooms are other areas to look for.
• Staff – what qualifications do the teachers have? Do they make sure their staff is trained in first aid and CPR? Do they have a front desk employee during all classes in case of emergency?
• Hidden costs - The price of classes is one thing, make sure to ask about other costs such as recital costumes/tickets, exam fees and extra classes, uniform cost, etc.
• Trial class – always try a class before signing up, make sure that you and your child feels comfortable with the studio, staff and the class. Ask about the refund policy before signing up as well, sometimes kids change their minds. 

Health Smart! Caring for Injuries

The majority of dance related injuries are soft tissue injuries – being muscle, ligament or tendon damage. First and foremost, always get a professional opinion. What may appear to be a slight muscle strain could in fact be something more serious. But… in the event that you are dealing with a basic soft tissue injury the best treatment is R.I.C.E.

Rest

You know when you are at the beginning of a cold and you take a day off to stay in bed with chicken noodle soup? Often you get over the cold within a day or two and are back at it functioning at 100%. But, if you push through the cold and don’t take that one day off, the cold often lingers for weeks leaving you at maybe 80% for a long time. Injuries are the same. Rest is important to allow the injury time to heal, pushing through could end up doing more damage than sitting out for one or two dance classes, which can mean you are back on your feet sooner.

Ice

Applying ice to an injury helps to decrease pain and swelling while increasing the healing process. The best ice treatment is 15-20 minutes on once an hour. Always wrap the ice pack or frozen vegi’s in a towel so it does not have direct contact with skin.

Compression

Compression of the area using a tensor bandage can help to keep contain the swelling.

Elevation

Elevating the area that is injured can help to get the blood back into circulation rather than pooling at the injury. Gravity can be in your favour. 

Spotlight: Recital Costuming

Recital time is coming up and we’ve got costume fever at Pegasus! Ever wonder how we get all those costumes together or why we handle costumes the way we do? Here it is… the cat is out of the box! All our secrets.

Secret number one: Hanna – Hanna is kind of like the fairy god-mother of costumes. We recycle costumes at Pegasus to try to keep costs down for parents. An average dance costume costs about $60-150 and many of our students need more than one costume! Parents, are the dollar signs starting to ring in your head yet? So instead of adding this extra cost, we invest in new costumes each year but always see what previous costumes we can reuse. But that means a lot of things. Cleaning, organizing and storage facilities – Hanna takes care of all of this. But most of all is the issue of fitting. When we reuse a costume we often find that we have to alter it for certain dancers or even that we have to re-create one or two because we have 12 dancers to 10 costumes. Hanna is the queen!

Secret number two: Missy – Missy is a seamstress that we’ve been working with for years now. Like Hanna, Missy can alter and re-create any costume we need, on top of designing and building wonderful costumes for our dancers. Without Missy… well, let’s not even think about that.

Secret number three: Embrace chaos while being extremely organized! This one is not as easy as it sounds.  The hardest part of this whole thing… making sure each and every student has a costume… that fits! Once that’s taken care of (a process that usually takes about 4 months) we have to make sure each student’s costume makes it to the theatre and in perfect shape.

Secret number four: Make sure you have some relaxation method in mind for directly after the evening of the recital… because the next day the cleaning, re-organizing and move to storage begins.

The best part of this whole process: Seeing the faces of the dancers when they first try on their costumes – it’s usually pretty exciting!