Tag: Patel Conservatory

National Dance Day Is Your Cue to Get Into the Groove 

Everybody dance now! It’s the law!  OK, it’s not the law but it is official. National Dance Day, Saturday, Sept. 19, was established in 2010 in a resolution introduced by Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), saluting dance as a form of both exercise and artistic expression. https://youtu.be/3jJFaaxDNao?si=5wYaIv1vFZ8xZ5RN National Dance Day originally was held in July but was changed to the third Saturday in September in 2019. This was good news, especially for dancers... Continue Reading →

High School Musical Still Resonates With Its Audience

Congratulations, millennials. Your past has become nostalgia. Case in point: High School Musical turns 20 this year. Those fictional East High students now are in their mid-30s with careers, mortgages and kids of their own, as are many of the Disney Channel movie’s real-life fans. Case in point: Natasha Herrera Brown, Straz’s media relations manager,... Continue Reading →

Finding the Magic in ‘Hot Cross Buns’

There is something inherently beautiful about human beings making music together. Differences and divisions dissolve in the warm glow of musical camaraderie. It follows then that gathering 15 grown-ups to play an instrument most people haven’t touched since elementary school is a noble effort. Further, getting that group to play the beloved traditional folk number,... Continue Reading →

Resilience Through Storytelling: How The Outsiders Gives Voice to Marginalized Youth and Inspires Across Generations

In 1967, a 16-year-old from Tulsa, OK., quietly shifted the landscape of American literature. Susan Eloise Hinton, known more publicly as S.E. Hinton wrote The Outsiders from her bedroom while still in high-school. What began as a response to the fractures she observed among her peers—the invisible line between those with privilege and those without—became... Continue Reading →

How Nutcracker Became a Holiday Tradition

It would be easy to assume that every dance ensemble in the Western Hemisphere is presenting The Nutcracker this time of year. For quite a while, one of the few that didn’t was St. Louis’ Center of Creative Arts, to the annual dismay of then-head of its dance department, Antonio Douthit-Boyd. Next Generation Ballet’s Nutcracker... Continue Reading →

Straz Has Many Cures for Summer Boredom

July is National Anti-Boredom Month. We don’t know who chose July, but their reasoning seems sound. It’s the middle of summer and going outside means being blinded by the sun and swamped by heat and humidity. Better to stay inside where it’s air-conditioned. Soon, though, staring at screens (or the walls) loses its luster. You... Continue Reading →

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