TexARTS continues to build its Youth Ballet Theater training and performing program this month, with 23 students learning and performing the classic ballet “The Firebird” throughout the month of July.

The three week ballet intensive culminates July 25-26 in a full performance of the piece, set to the original Stravinsky score. The event takes place in TexARTS’ Kam & James Morris Theater at TexARTS’ Keller Williams Studios at 2300 Lohman’s Spur in Lakeway.
“TexARTS strives to create a broad-view, integrated approach when teaching the various arts disciplines to young people,” said TexARTS co-founder and executive director Todd Dellinger. “While we provide the very best professional teachers and a strong technique-based training in the particular area of focus — in this case ballet — we believe that introducing and involving students in various other facets of the whole process helps create a more rounded understanding of the art and craft of performance and, ultimately, a more rounded individual. After all, this is what is needed when students progress to higher education and real-world experiences, whether in the arts or in any other aspect of their lives.”
TexARTS’ Youth Ballet Theater director Lisl Vaillant-McDonald, whose extensive performing credits include eight years in the corps d’ballet and Meg Giry understudy in the smash hit “The Phantom of the Opera” as well as with the “Stars of the New York City Ballet” and “Stars of the American Ballet Theater,” and teaching at the esteemed “The Rock” school in Pennsylvania and for Austin Ballet, is setting her original choreography on the student performers, aged seven through eighteen and teaching advanced technique to the students each day of the three-week program.
Students also learn from academy administrator and teacher Megan Bettis and Artistic Director and Broadway stage veteran Robin Lewis, as well as various elements of stage production from various guests.
Younger students will have created their own “monster” masks, unitards and various scenic elements and older students will have helped in the crafting of costumes and scenic elements to help them understand the integral other areas of making a production successful and beautiful to watch. In addition to the performance of “Firebird” students will also showcase character work learned in class and younger students will showcase some of the unique “Fosse” style learned from Robin Lewis, who performed in the hit musical of the same name on Broadway.
The Firebird is a non-ticketed event, with contributions benefitting the TexARTS Youth Ballet Program and Scholarships encouraged. RSVP by calling TexARTS at 852-9079, extension 104.
For more information on TexARTS’ ballet and other dance programs and youth performance opportunities, visit www.Tex-ARTS.org or call 852-9079, extension 103.