Dance Performance at Colegio Santa Mariana de Jesus

Every so often, we used to go to High School plays in California. They were a nice change from the polished Broadway shows we usually saw, and was a reminder of High School when I had several friends in the theater club, and used to help them learn their lines (I was a nerd before the word was invented ☺, and wasn’t in theater myself).

Tonight we were invited to go to a High School dance performance.  We weren’t quite sure what to expect, other than that the daughter of Evelyn’s art instructors would be performing.  Upon entering the school, we discovered that the performance was in the gym — which was outdoors.  The school has a ring of classrooms around an open center courtyard, which is outfitted with basketball hoops and was used as a dance stage tonight.  It has been raining almost every evening for the past few weeks, but the students had luck on their side, since this was the only clear night in awhile.

The school covers grades 7 through 12, and each student in this girl’s school was part of some dance group.  As the night progressed, the quality of the dances improved, with Silvana Soriano (the friend we had come to see) up last with a belly dancing routine.  She is seen in the top two images of this photo montage in the blue dress.  While they danced, the younger students formed a ring to keep people from coming onto the field.  After the last dance performance, about 40 gymnasts of all grades gave a rather impressive demonstration of their skills too.

After all dance and gymnast performances were complete, attention moved to the stage, where the Queen of each grade was introduced and crowned.  Being a girl’s only school, there were no Kings…

Silvana Dance from Burt Johnson on Vimeo.

Here is a brief clip from Silvana’s dance.  If you want to see her entire performance, you can see it here.