A-6 Wed/Thurs/Fri, January 2-4, 2019 The Park Record Dancers will leave it all on the floor A picture of justice Students planned, choreographed the performance CAROLYN WEBBER ALDER The Park Record The upcoming performance from Park City High School’s Dance Company II is sure to be an emotional roller coaster. The dance company is set to perform its annual informal and informative performance, or informance, on Jan. 15 at the Eccles Center’s Black Box Theater. The performance will focus on six universal human emotions — happiness, sadness, fear/anxiety, contempt, surprise and anger — with dancers representing the different emotions through 10 pieces. Educational videos about the movements and academic principles of dance will accompany the dances. The 19 high school students on the team organized the entire show, from choreographing the dances to writing and filming videos to creating the posters, press releases and programs for the event. The students also came up with the idea for the performance. After learning about Bartenieff Fundamentals and Laban Movement Analysis, which are methods of analyzing movement, the students chose to embody the methods through dance. They selected emotions and experimented with different body shapes and movements to match the feelings, said April Buys, a senior and member of the team. She said the dances are “raw and honest,” because the students had to access their own emotions while choreographing the pieces. Ashley Nava, a sophomore on the team, choreographed the anxiety/fear dance. She said it was difficult at first. But, after time, she learned to overcome her fear of opening up through dance. “For me, it’s hard to show emotion and express myself, so when we’re dancing, it’s like I COURTESY OF PARK CITY SCHOOL DISTRICT Fifth-grade students at McPolin Elementary School pose with a mural they created in Joe Dvorak’s dual-language Spanish class. The mural represents the human rights and farm workers’ movements, which the students have been learning about over the past few months. The mural includes Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez, labor and civil rights activists, and other symbols of the movements. Nikki Keye, a parent volunteer with an extensive background in art, helped the students create the mural. COURTESY OF ASHLEY MOTT Dancers in Park City High School’s Dance Company II after a performance earlier this school year. The dancers have choreographed and organized a performance set to take place on Jan. 15. move with a purpose. It’s something I can show my emotions in,” Nava said. Malia Haynes, a junior, said it was “intense” to work on the sadness piece, and that some tears were shed throughout practices. I like that it really is our piece. It’s all of us. It’s everything we have to give,” April Buys, Park City High School Dance Company II Each of the dances have unique movements to accompany the emotions represented. Nava’s fear/anxiety piece has a contemporary style, while happiness includes hip-hop moves. Haynes said each dancer on the team used their own skills to create the performance, and she is eager to see all the efforts come together for the show. The students have been coming to school 30 minutes early for the past few weeks, and they have put in plenty of after-school hours since starting the project in November. After all the hours of rehearsing and preparing, the dancers said they are even more proud of the performance. For Buys, starting the show from scratch to making it “alive and thriving” was incredible. “It’s a lot of work to put on,” she said. “I like that it really is our piece. It’s all of us. It’s everything we have to give.” That pride is exactly the reason Ashley Mott, the dance company director, lets her students take ownership of the performance. Plus, she hopes they learn real life skills as they collaborate with each other, work through conflict and see the project through to the end. “One of my goals is that they have a very authentic, real-life experience of what it takes to make a production,” Mott said. She has had her students plan their own informances for the last three years. “I watch them gain so much confidence,” she said. “It’s all on them, and at first they feel overwhelmed or like, ‘How can we do this? We are just students.’ But then they do it and they realize how capable they are and how important constructive collaboration is.” She said this year’s team has been particularly cohesive. Another major goal of the show is to educate the audience about the academic side of dance, Mott said. The students filmed footage to describe the different movement analyses, which will be shown throughout the performance. But, ultimately, she and the dancers hope the audience leaves having experienced the emotions guiding the dances. “We go out there incredibly vulnerable. We are showing these emotions on a really raw level, especially with things like fear or sadness,” Haynes said. “I’m hoping that after each dance, the audience kind of goes on that journey with us. They feel that fear, anxiety, and then they get happy with us, and they come down in sadness with us. They go through that entire journey that we have been going on.” The shows are set to take place at 5:30 and 7 p.m. and are free and open to the public, but donations will be accepted. The dance company is also expected to dance for Parley’s Park Elementary School students at 9:15 a.m. and for Treasure Mountain Junior High students at noon on the same day. Continued from A-5 Fees examined each fee associated with every activity or course. The district already has this practice in place, Hauber said. The second one will be an aggregate maximum per student, meaning that the sum of all fees one individual student will pay will never exceed a given amount. “If you have a student that is a three-sport athlete, we have to figure out, ‘Well, what does that look like?’” he said. Given how involved Park City students are in different activities, the number might be difficult to set, Hauber said. The Park City Board of Education will then have to decide whether it will pay for the additional fees as it did with academic fees in the spring, or if it will leave the fees for the students, he said. The district budgeted $691,000 to cover academic fees for books and equipment during the 201819 school year. Prior to the Board’s decision, students and their families either had to pay or go through a fee waiver process. At the time of the Board voting to take on the academic fees, Board President Andrew Caplan said fees for athletics and extra-curricular activities would still be paid by students, but he hoped to find a way to make the options more affordable for students in the next year. The Board will have the ultimate say on what fees it will continue to cover and the fee maximums, but Caplan said under the proposed rule, the community would have a much larger role in the decision-making process. “What is the right thing to do for our community? Is the right thing to provide those activity options to everyone or to provide a certain amount to everyone or to provide a certain stipend? There are all kinds of different outcomes that could be acceptable,” he said. Caplan said he is proud of Park City’s decision to remove academic fees, because the district is a leader to others in the state. He admitted the decision was a little controversial, but the Board wanted to remove barriers for students to participate in courses. Now, he is glad the Board went through with its decision. “I’m excited that we’re out in front of it,” he said. A PLACE FOR YOU IN PARK CITY FROM THE LOW $300,000s. FOR REAL. PLAYFUL SPACES AND EFFICIENT DESIGN It’s about time you had a place of your own. A place on the mountain, a place by the fire, a place by the pool. Smart design brings the price down— way down—for a pad with everything you need. Live and play smarter in your place at the heart of Canyons Village, a short walk from the gondola. To learn more, contact Mark Rodeheaver at 435.659.8993 or mark@reparkcity.com yotelpadparkcity.com YOTELPAD condominiums are not currently being offered for sale. Reservations are expressions of interest only and may not result in a binding agreement for purchase once condominiums are offered for sale. 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