Local dancers will be putting on their pointe shoes this weekend and welcoming new professional instructors to mold their moves.
For the first time, the Baton Rouge Ballet Theatre is hosting the Regional Dance America/Southwest Fall Workshop. This Saturday’s workshop will serve as a learning opportunity for dancers who register, as well as a fundraiser for Regional Dance America.
Regional Dance America is a national association of dance companies from across the United States and Canada. There are five regional associations for RDA, and the Baton Rouge Ballet Theatre is part of the Southwest division.
The workshop is an all-day intensive, allowing regional dancers from ages 12 and up to train under the artistic direction of Mary Beth Arrington, of the City Ballet of Houston, Cristina Munro, of the Corpus Christi Ballet, Carol Anglin, of the Louisiana Dance Theatre and Susan Clark, of the Midland Festival Ballet.
History senior and BRBT dancer Katrina Cassiere said she plans to attend the workshop to learn new skills in ballet, pointe, character and modern dance from new instructors.
“You get to see different teachers, you get to see different perspectives and possibly different techniques depending on what kind of background the teacher has,” Cassiere said.
Cassiere, who has danced with BRBT for about a year and a half, said learning new combinations and routines is what makes dancing workshops so valuable because dancers become stagnant after seeing the same moves every class.
Cassiere said each instructor and artistic director dancers’ experience adds something fresh to their arsenal, which mimics the professional dance world where they must work with different choreographers all the time.
“It challenges your body and your mind to not just work off of the same combinations every day,” Cassiere said. “It’s really beneficial to learn to adjust to different kinds of methods.”
BRBT co-artistic director Sharon Mathews said she’s excited to bring an RDA workshop like this to Baton Rouge.
“It’s to give the dancers in this area the experience of taking classes with these wonderful artistic directors who have so much to share with their different genres of dance,” Mathews said. “But at the same time, it’s a fundraiser for Regional Dance America.”
Not only are the artistic directors offering their expertise and dance philosophies, they’re doing it for free.
“These directors volunteer to teach,” Mathews said. “They volunteer to do it for the organization. When, normally, you’d pay a teacher about $200 a class to go in and teach.”
Mathews said many teachers simply love to teach and share their experiences and successes with the younger dancers, as many of them try to find their own way.
With the workshop, BRBT dancers will get to know each other, which Mathews said is important because they’ll be together all year rehearsing and performing. Mathews said the bonding is rewarding within itself because they’ll gain trust and new allies when they see each other again in the spring.
The workshop also calls attention to RDA’s widespread reach, proving that dancers don’t have to be in the Northeast to thrive.
“Here, in Baton Rouge, we’re proud of all the support we get,” Mathews said. “You think you have to be in New York, but I think we do well.”

Gallery • 6 Photos

Emily Brauner

Dancers participate in a workshop on Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2015, hosted by the Baton Rouge Ballet Theatre.