Lights! Camera! Dance!

The annual winter dance show took place on February 27 and 28 in the Jeanice H. Seaverns Performing Arts Center. This year's show was titled Lights! Camera! Dance! and showcased the talents of 27 members of the 2019-2020 Suffield Academy Dance Company: seniors Akira Alleyne, Tomasso Calderan, Rikke Gundersen, Caroline Kelly, Sabrina Louro, Sohi Shah, Laurel Vardakas, and Caroline Walsh; juniors Naila Gomez, Brigid Lawry, Max Santopietro, Kaitlin Sun, and Megan Swanson; sophomores Paige August, Juliana Colaccino, Nailah Estrada, Miranda Gao, Jina Lee, Zeina Lee, Kennedy Morris, Manoush Pajouh, Suleni Sabio-Arzu Brown, and Katya Yurkovkaya; freshmen Morgan Geisinger, Sloane Hafner, Brighie Hogan, and Sophia Kim.

Lights! Camera! Dance! was directed by Gis-Xi Nahmens with help from assistant directors Brittney D’Olea ’15 and Caroline Bauchiero ’15 and choreographer Ally Rocco. Split into two acts, Lights! Camera! Dance!celebrated popular songs from hit films including The Lion King, West Side Story, Slumdog Millionaire, A Star is Born, Dirty Dancing, La La Land, and more. Opening the show was a crowd-favorite rendition of The Lion King’s “Circle of Life (remix)” performed by District 78, choreographed by Ally Rocco, and executed by the entire Suffield Academy Dance Company. Other inspired acts included Lady Gaga’s “Why Did You Do That To Me?” from A Star is Born and Billie Eilish’s “Bad Guy” as featured in the 2019 horror movie Brightburn.

Paige August is a new sophomore from Canton, Connecticut, who danced for many years before matriculating to Suffield. In addition to spending 12 years studying at the Gloria J. Rossetti School of Dance (Simsbury, Connecticut), Paige spent two years with the Connecticut Dance Academy (Canton, Connecticut) and performed competitively for the last five. Commenting on the success of Suffield’s latest stage production Paige noted, “The show was so much fun and actually went a lot smoother than we expected considering the large number of intricate synchronizations. I like dancing in the style of contemporary lyrical and so I really enjoyed the “Never Enough” piece we did from The Greatest Showman, choreographed by Ms. Bauchiero. It went really, really well.”