Pictured are the Honors Select Chorale and the Honors Select Ensemble before rehearsals at Warsaw Community High School’s Performing Arts Center Friday. Photo by Jackie Gorski, Times-Union.
Pictured are the Honors Select Chorale and the Honors Select Ensemble before rehearsals at Warsaw Community High School’s Performing Arts Center Friday. Photo by Jackie Gorski, Times-Union.
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Warsaw Community Schools will hold a dance performance and orchestra and choir concerts at Warsaw Community High School Performing Arts Center in the next week and a half.

Grace Robison, PAC director and dance teacher, said the choir concert will be at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, the orchestra concert will be 7 p.m. Thursday and the dance performance is Dec. 21 at 7 p.m.

Admission is free and open to everyone, Robison said.

The dance performance is a little new this year so Robison said that event will be closer to an hour this year.

This year’s dance performance will include classes from Dance 1, Dance For Athletes and Honors Select Ensemble class and Honors Dance class. Also included will be an auditioned dance team that was started this year, which includes four Edgewood Middle School students and two WCHS students.

There is also a dance outreach program, which includes three elementary school students, particularly second-graders, from Jefferson, Washington and Eisenhower. Those outreach program students will be performing with the Honors Select Ensemble, Robison said.

The dance performance is holiday themed, but it has a musical theater influence with “High School Musical” with basketballs with athletes.

Robison said, for rehearsing, she meets with the students every day. The Honors Select Ensemble with the outreach program goes with Robison to the three elementary schools and “we’ve been doing that for six weeks, seven weeks including the week of the concert. So that includes after-school commitment with them with their curriculum.”

It is a requirement for students to perform in the concert. For the athletes, it’s not actually part of their syllabus, but they chose to do their jazz dance because they all wanted to perform this year, Robison said.

“It’s really, really special to be able to see that every single part of the school system is included, so we have elementary school students, middle school student and high schoolers,” Robison said.

She said she hopes people see the impact dance can have on a child’s life and education is important and dance is an art. Dance also brings physicality and commodatary.

Angela Dieleman, orchestra teacher, said the orchestra concert will be about an hour long.

The entire orchestra program at WCS will be a part of the performance, so that includes sixth through 12th grade, Dieleman said. There a couple different classes, which includes a beginning orchestra and an advanced orchestra class at Edgewood and Lakeview Middle School. At WCHS, there is the Obbligato String Orchestra and the Philharmonic Orchestra, Dieleman said.

The theme for the orchestra is “Holidays around the World,” because the orchestra will be presenting different folk songs typically played around the holidays originated in different countries, Dieleman said.

The orchestras have been rehearsing since mid-October in class, Dieleman said.

With all the middle and high school classes, concerts are part of the curriculum, Dieleman said. So what’s learned in class is what’s presented at the concert, so “it’s really, you know, what we worked on in class, we can present to the community. It’s not just something we do at school. We share it.”

Cassandra Petrie, choir director, said the choir will be about an hour.

All five choirs at WCHS will be in the concert, which are Select Chorale, Advanced Women, Beginning Women, Beginning Men and Intermediate Choir.

The choir concert will feature a variety of holiday selections.

The choirs have been practicing since mid-October and is correlated with the course work, Petrie said. There is one mandatory after-school rehearsal.

“It’s a very exciting thing to kind of show off what you’ve been working on, and sometimes, it’s very intimidating to that by yourself. But the great thing about choir is that you’re not by yourself. You’re with at least 20 of your best friends up there on stage, singing,” Petrie said. Choir also gets students out of their comfort zone.

Petrie said she thinks it’s special when family and other friends from the high school come to support their friends up on their stage.