Dancers to take Anchorage stage for annual workshop

WASILLA — Farah Canale says that to be a dancer, you’ve got to love both main parts of being a dancer.

First, you’ve got to love practicing, training and generally living as an athlete.

“Being a dancer is also being an athlete,” Canale said.

But you also have to love being on stage. The stage, she said, is a completely different world. She calls it an “interesting land” that is, of course, staged and imaginary but very real in the moment you’re there.

“Some of the most beautiful and touching moments I’ve had in my life have been on stage,” Canale, artistic director of Dancers Workshop said Friday as the studio waited for that day’s classes to begin.

The studio is preparing for its big yearly show at the Alaska Center for the Performing Arts. This year’s show is titled “The Book of Elements” and includes pieces that relate to the elements of earth, wind, fire and water. The performances are today and tomorrow at 7 p.m., and should run from two hours to 2:45. More information is available at 717-8707.

Assistant artistic director Holly Haney said that the theme is different every year. Past iterations have related to music or that tried and true topic, “what I want to be when I grow up.”

Haney said she came up with “The Book of Elements” after discovering that elemental ideas are popular now. There’s 30 to 35 separate pieces in the show. The way those individual pieces relate to the theme varies based on the age group of the performers.

Younger kids, Haney said, will dance in the rain or simulate fireworks, “things that children that age can grasp.” Pieces for teenagers get a little bit more esoteric, dealing with feelings the different elements provoke.

Canale summed it up: “Younger children’s pieces are a little more literal. Older children’s pieces are a little more in-depth.”

The number of performances and length of the run time is due to Canale called “full studio participation” — all of the Dancers Workshop classes are getting in on the act.

“Which, I guess is really nice to see as a parent at the studio or a parent wishing to see what their child might get out of dance lessons,” Canale said.

She herself was once a child plopped into a dance class, and she’s been at it ever since. The workshop has been operating 26 years, with the last seven being under Canale.

The same is true for Haney, who actually started out as a kid in one of the Dancers Workshop classes.

“It’s been really fun to be able to come back and help with these productions, given that I started here when I was 9,” Haney said.

And if putting more than 30 performances on a stage in Anchorage seems a little daunting, the sort of thing likely to get a little chaotic, that’s part of the experience. Canale said it’s important for students to see how performances are run in a place like the PAC. And it’s something they’ll remember.

“We’re going to be sharing the building with ‘Mary Poppins,’” she said. “They get to see what it’s really like to perform in a professional venue.”

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or

andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.