Lila Sawyer
Junior Louisa Schimming performs in the spotlight of the Ballet at Bardavon Theater on May 31, 2025.
Presenting a journal of Ballet Arts Studio’s spring concert, “Once Upon a Dance,” which occurred on May 31, 2025 at the Bardavon Theater in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. Haldane High School students participated including senior Keira Shanahan, junior Louisa Schimming, sophomore Clara Gelber, freshman Leo O’Neil, and freshman Chloe Hasler, as well as many Haldane middle and elementary school students.
May 31, 2025, 11:00 am – I just got to the Bardavon! It’s a gorgeous old theater with a classic Marquis and ornate designs around the stage from 1869. It’s the oldest operating theater in New York! I entered through the stage door, where you come into the wings on stage left and then go down a staircase to the dressing rooms. There’s a hallway that runs underneath the stage with four different dressing rooms. Mine is at the end of the hall- it’s for people who are in Dutchess Dance Company, which is a group of older dancers that’s supposed to model a professional dance company. We rehearse every Saturday and perform more often than the rest of our peers. In between all the rooms is our favorite part: the snack table! It has Nerds Gummy Clusters, Sour Patch Kids, bell peppers, Doritos, pineapple… fuel for dancing! If you keep going to the end of the hallway, it leads up the stairs to the wings on stage right.
11:30 am – We’re starting warm-up class now! Our teacher, Ms. Marisa Paull Gorst, gives us a ballet class on the stage so we can warm up before the show. It’s fun to have class with everyone at our studio together (except for the really little kids.)
1:00 pm – The show starts in 1 hour! I have to do my stage makeup and then preset my costumes for quick changes. Basically, the way the show works is that each class at our studio rehearses a dance throughout the year, at 3 minutes each. Each year the concert has a theme, and this year it’s fairytales, so each dance is inspired by a different folklore story! I have eight dances in total. Some people have one, some people have 14. Act 1 is all ballet, so the costume changes aren’t too bad, because we’re wearing pointe shoes, pink tights, and a high bun the whole time. But then Act 2 is all non-ballet pieces, and the changes are harder because the costumes are more varied. I have three minutes to change from hip hop to modern, and I have to swap my costume, shoes, tights, and hair. So before the show, we put all of the costumes that we need to change into quickly in the wings, and we put them on there.
1:40 pm – I’m getting into costume for my first ballet piece. Personally, I’m listening to quiet music to calm my nerves (currently: Louise by TV Girl). But the rest of my dressing room is playing ABBA, and the hallway dressing room is playing Hamilton.
3:00 pm – It’s intermission! Act 1 went really well! No one fell or got injured or cried. At the end of the act, my Upper School Ballet class performed a piece from the Sleeping Beauty ballet, and then each of the five of us in the Variations class performed variations from Sleeping Beauty. Mine is the Lilac Fairy. All of the solos went well and got a lot of applause! Now I have to change for Act 2.
4:30 pm- The show is over! Act 2 also went well. I did tap, modern, and hip hop. After my tap piece, I watched the group dance with all the graduating seniors. This year there are three seniors, and they did a tap/ jazz/ hip hop trio to Defying Gravity. After the show was over, we did final bows. Now we’re having a dinner break, and then we have to reset all of our costumes for the second show at 6:30!
9:00 pm – I forgot to update this at intermission because I had to change, but the second show also went really well! Now we have to clean up the dressing room, which is the worst part. I don’t know how I even brought all of this stuff! After we clean, it’s a tradition that all of us in the Company go to the diner together, and I changed into a dress for that!
12:07 am – I just got home from the diner. Time to sleep.