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Five dancers, five awards

Coast Academy of Dance
dance
Dance Society members with two of this year’s award recipients (from left): Cora Nelson (seated), Maggie Guzzi, Molly Carpenter, Diana Robertson

Molly Carpenter was all set for her first day as a teacher at the Coast Academy of Dance (CAD) in Sechelt where she will give four classes back to back, but she took time out to talk with Coast Reporter. She teaches hip hop and tap as well as jazz and modern. It’s easy to see why she was the recipient of a multi-genre award this year, and was given her scholarship – one of five cash awards this year – in a program administered by the Sunshine Coast Dance Society.

Eighteen girls competed for the awards this year before a panel of impartial judges – that is, dance professionals who were not associated with any of the Coast’s schools. All of the five recipients this year will continue with dance as a career.

Carpenter loves dance for its freedom. “I can express myself in it,” she said. “It makes me happy.” She graduated from Chate-lech Secondary, and was part of a pre-professional program in which she kept up her academic studies along with dance classes.

Cora Nelson is also part of that program, and hopes to teach one day. The Grade 10 student won the Lois Smith Award of Excellence in Ballet; she also excels in modern dance, has learned tap and jazz and is new to hip hop. Her scholarship was a total surprise, especially since she watched the competition while waiting for her audition and was greatly impressed with the talent of the others. She has already used her cash award to take a summer workshop that led her to two days of classes at the Harbour Dance Centre in Vancouver.

Evangeline Larsen won one of the multi-genre awards with a solo that she choreographed herself. This season she dances out of both Dominique’s School of Dance and CAD. A previous winner of the Lois Smith Ballet scholarship, she will graduate this year from Elphinstone Secondary and hopes to pursue dance in future as well as continue her education.

“But I am keeping my options open,” she said. “I am so honoured to have won this scholarship and it is greatly appreciated.”

This year Jaime Butler was awarded the Lois Smith Award of Excellence in Ballet Scholarship. She plans to continue her dance career and teach after she graduates. She is currently in her second year as a pre-professional at CAD studying for her teaching diploma in modern dance. Her many styles of dance include tap, jazz, modern, hip hop, musical theatre, ballet and pointe.

Kristie Sita, recipient of a multi-genre award, will be teaching tap and modern at the Coast Academy of Dance. She began her dance training there in 2002 as part of the pre-professional program and trained intensively in modern, tap, ballet, hip hop, Broadway jazz and contemporary. In 2013 Kristie was selected for Team Canada that went to the World Championship of Tap in Germany. This year she was accepted into Harbour Dance Centre’s Intensive Training Program.

Dance fans have a chance to see many of these promising dancers in this year’s Nutcracker ballet, a production of Coasting Along Theatre.