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Lake Erie Ballet plans move to Villa Maria Campus

The Lake Erie Ballet has big plans of moving to Villa Maria Campus next season. The organization will be renovating the Medaille Room on the east side of the central building on campus, currently housing the Little Villa, Villa Elementary and Erie Dawn. With great support from our neighbors in the building and a little help from the Sisters of St. Joseph, the Lake Erie Ballet has been graciously “adopted” into the already dynamic arts program at Villa. It’s a perfect fit.

It’s no secret the Villa Maria Campus and the Sisters of St. Joseph have been great champions in sustaining arts and education for over fifty years. Just last week, visual arts instructor Julia Horan, music instructors Katie Kurpiewski and Candyce Barrante coordinated with dance instructor Nicole Benjamin and five other academic faculty to present a comprehensive presentation entitled “the Lesson Plan”. It highlighted the integral role the arts play in education at Villa Maria Elementary School. The performance integrated live performance of music and dance and the children theatrically created and presented a forum for their classmates to participate and learn within.

At the same time this was happening - on the other end of campus - dance classes for children age two and a half to six were being been offered to VME students by the Lake Erie Ballet. It was agreed last year, children be allowed to attend dance classes each week through the Little Villa facility in order to augment their educational experience. It quickly became apparent the children and staff enjoy this opportunity as enrollment grew in numbers weekly. These classes have been “adopted” in to the curriculum at Little Villa in lieu of a more fully developed program adopting the art form of dance into the curriculum at Villa Maria Elementary.

Dance instructor, Nicole Benjamin started the ball rolling with after-school dance classes in the elementary school last year. These classes were designed and presented as a comprehensive approach to the art form and sparked the interest of children age three to thirteen. Due to the success of these classes, the similarity in children’s programming and its year round season, the Lake Erie Ballet was determined to be a good match and was quickly invited to offer classes during school hours.

The Lake Erie Ballet is a 61 year old organization that was founded by Statia Sublette in 1948. Her intention was to bring classical ballet to Erie, Pennsylvania. She brought great choreographers like George Balanchine to Erie in an attempt to expose the area to great artists. As a result the Erie Civic Ballet, as it was called until 1987 when director Robert Steele changed the name to the Lake Erie Ballet, became a source of great dance education and thusly, great dance performances. It’s a little known fact - Erie has more successful professional dancers than professional athletes – much of this is due to the spectacular presences and personae espousing great art from the Lake Erie Ballet and other great supporters of fine art in Erie.

The Lake Erie Ballet has fostered strong arts in education programming since professional ballet dancer and instructor Christina Maria Adelhardt began her eleven year service as director of the Lake Erie Ballet in 1989. She envisioned a broad view of the community the Lake Erie Ballet serves and began introducing local school children to the art form in the most unlikely of places. Since then the Lake Erie Ballet has continued to broaden its audience with each season or performances and programming. With the renewed fervor for an “art filled” education from new staff at both organizations, relocation of the Lake Erie Ballet to Villa Maria Campus seemed the most logical choice in the evolution of both organizations.

The Lake Erie Ballet will begin renovations on three beautiful new studios in the Medaille Room in the New Year. We invite the Villa and Lake Erie Ballet families to come and view this new home of the Lake Erie Ballet during an Open House to be held Thursday, Dec. 10th from 5:00 – 8:00 pm in the Medaille Room on Villa Maria Campus. The evening will be filled with good food, good drink, great people and exciting dance. Performers from the Lake Erie Ballet Company and Academy of Dance will present works at 7:00 pm from the 2009-2010 Season. This event is free and open to the public. Come celebrate a great collaboration between two of Erie’s oldest and strongest advocates for arts in education.

701 Holland St.

Erie, PA 16501