Making dance approachable: DanceAspen launches educational outreach program

DanceAspen is launching its first ever educational outreach program with a performance at Aspen Elementary and Aspen Middle School on Wednesday, Feb. 21.

Professional dancers from DanceAspen will perform at the elementary and middle schools and participate in a question and answer segment with the students. It is the first of what DanceAspen hopes is many performances through DanceStart, the local dance company’s new educational outreach program.

“Our goal from the very beginning of starting DanceAspen was to make dance super approachable for students and people of all backgrounds within the Roaring Fork community,” said Kaya Wolsey, company manager and marketing director for DanceAspen. “A big part of that is appealing to students at a young age because we feel like that’s an important time to start teaching kids about fine art and getting them interested in those things.”

Students will get to watch the dancers warm up before they perform “Scale Back,” a dance piece choreographed by DanceAspen choreographer and founding member Matthew Gilmore. After the dancers do a question and answer segment with the students, they will teach them dance movements they can perform from their seats.

DanceAspen is collaborating with Aspen Dance Connection to work with school staff to integrate the performances into the school schedule. It is hoping to expand to other schools in the Roaring Fork Valley.

The goal of DanceStart is to make dance more accessible to young students.

“I remember growing up… companies would come to our school and I was a dancer so I just remember being very excited and enthralled by the idea that professional dancers were there,” Wolsey said. “They were very unapproachable to me at the studio when I was dancing, but then they would come in the schools and it was very nice to be able to engage with them in a new, human way a little bit.”

“I think it can provide something different and unique that students don’t get every day in their schools,” she added.

DanceAspen is working to expand several aspects of its educational programming. It has expanded its adult classes and is hoping to offer master classes for dancers in the valley in the future. Eventually, DanceAspen hopes to expand its educational outreach to include more classes for different age groups.

“The company started in 2021 and it’s all growing really quickly, but things like this take time,” Wolsey said. “We’re really excited to take this first step of the program to really get out there and get our name out there with a group of people that maybe haven’t seen us before.”